Chichester Samuel Parkinson-Fortescue (1823–1898), Baron Carlingford and 2nd Baron Clermont

Chichester Samuel Parkinson-Fortescue, Baron Carlingford of 1871, at the Examination Schools of Oxford University, depicts a prominent Liberal politician who served in various ministerial positions under Gladstone and was known for his intelligence, social charm, and close friendship with many leading figures of Victorian cultural life. The Examination Schools at Oxford, which hold a number of institutional portraits, received this work as a record of a man connected to the university's political and intellectual world. Tissot painted several formal portraits of prominent public figures during his early London years, establishing himself alongside Millais and others as a portraitist of the political and social establishment. A portrait of a cabinet minister by Tissot from 1871 represents an important early statement of his position within the British establishment.

Oil on canvas, the formal portrait employs the conventions of political portraiture: sober dress, dignified bearing, a compositional setting that communicates public service and intellectual authority. Tissot's technique, which typically thrived on the visual richness of fashionable female dress, is here exercised in the more austere context of Victorian male formal attire.