Euseby Cleaver (1746–1819), Archbishop of Dublin

Euseby Cleaver served as Archbishop of Dublin from 1809 until his death in 1819, but George Romney's 1796 portrait, now at Christ Church Picture Gallery, precedes that appointment by over a decade, depicting Cleaver during his earlier career as a clergyman and church official. Cleaver was educated at Oxford and held various positions in the Church of England before his elevation to the Irish archbishopric. Romney's ecclesiastical portraits for Oxford colleges reflect the university's role as the primary training ground for the senior Anglican clergy, and Christ Church Picture Gallery holds a substantial collection of portraits of clerics and scholars connected to the college. The 1796 date places this among Romney's late London works, painted during the period of declining health that would end his active career three years later. Cleaver's composed face in the portrait carries the cultivated gravity appropriate to a senior cleric of significant ambition.

The portrait follows the conventions of clerical portraiture that Romney had refined over decades of ecclesiastical commissions. The clerical dress imposes a certain compositional formality, while the face is given the primary tonal complexity. The late 1796 date shows some slight diminishment of the fluid energy of Romney's best years, though the quality remains high.