Portrait of Anne, Queen of Great Britain (1665-1714)

Charles Jervas was born in King’s County, Ireland in 1675. By the mid-1690s he had moved to London, where he studied with Sir Godfrey Kneller for approximately one year. Following a sojourn on the continent where he acted as an agent for English collectors in Rome, Jervas returned to London in 1708, quickly establishing himself as a fashionable society portraitist. Some of his most accomplished portraits are of Anne, Countess of Sunderland (private coll.) and the author Jonathan Swift (National Portrait Gallery, London). With the help of his most influential patron, the Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, Jervas was appointed Principal Painter to the King in 1723, painting coronation portraits of George II and Queen Caroline (Guildhall Art Gallery) as well as the young Prince William, Duke of Cumberland (NPG). This post Jervas held for the remainder of his life. Jervas’ portrait of Queen Anne is based on a version of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s state portrait, the finest example of which is held at Wrest Park, signed and dated 1705. It appears that the Queen herself did not own a version of her own state portrait, and this particular version was commissioned by Queen Caroline. Caroline was fascinated with ancestry, and this portrait was originally displayed as part of a series of British royal portraits in the Queen’s Gallery at Kensington.