Philip Champion de Crespigny (1738–1803), MP

Philip Champion de Crespigny was a Member of Parliament who held the seat for Sudbury in Suffolk, and his portrait by Opie is now at Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire — a Palladian country house with collections assembled over generations. De Crespigny's Huguenot surname signals family descent from French Protestant refugees who settled in England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; by his generation, such families were thoroughly integrated into English society while retaining the cultural distinction of their ancestry. A parliamentary portrait of a country gentleman MP was a standard commission type, and Opie's execution gives the subject the same direct, dignified treatment he brought to all parliamentary subjects. The Kelmarsh Hall context suggests the portrait was in country house ownership rather than institutional collection through much of its history.

Parliamentary portraiture from this period typically employed a formal three-quarter or half-length format with the sitter in everyday gentleman's dress rather than official costume — MPs were not required to wear robes as peers were. Opie's bold modelling gives the face strong presence without theatrical staging, appropriate to a country gentleman representing a small borough.