Later Stuart Portraits Catalogue

Diplomat, member of the Kit-Cat Club; Middle Temple 1690; secretary at the embassies at Constantinople 1690-91, Venice 1697-98, and Paris 1699-1700, 1702; envoy extraordinary in Switzerland 1705-14 where he organised resistance to the French; published an Account of Switzerland 1714; lord of the Admiralty 1714-17; MP 1715-17; his many subsequent diplomatic appointments included spells in Vienna 1716-17 and Constantinople 1717-30, where his successor, Lord Kinnoull, described him as ‘a well behaved complaisant Gentleman, of an indolent temper, … loves Grandeur & show & is very careless in his private affairs … His whole life, for these twelve years past, as I informed, has been upon a sofa, with the Women’.


This extended catalogue entry is from the National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685-1714, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.