Sir William Grant (1752–1832), Master of the Rolls

The Guildhall Art Gallery version of Sir William Grant, Master of the Rolls, painted in 1802 in judicial robes, documents one of the most respected jurists of the late Georgian bench. Grant's reputation for impartiality and legal learning made him the natural model for what a Chancery judge should be — his successors measured themselves against his standard for decades. The Guildhall Art Gallery's institutional context is particularly appropriate for this judicial portrait: the City of London's civic collection, housed in the building adjacent to the Guildhall where civic government and legal proceedings have been conducted since the medieval period, provides exactly the right setting for a portrait of a judge who served the legal institutions that the City's own justice system exemplified. The 1802 date makes this one of Lawrence's precisely dated major works, allowing its relationship to his stylistic development to be accurately assessed; the judicial robes and composed authority of the composition are handled with the confident fluency of a painter who had fully mastered the formal vocabulary of English official portraiture by this point in his career.

The Guildhall version is more formal than the Sheffield portrait, with the judicial robes rendered in careful detail and the composition arranged to convey the weight of office. Lawrence's handling of the dark robes against the sitter's pale face creates effective visual contrast and institutional gravity.