Sir Philip Meadows (1626–1718)

This portrait of Sir Philip Meadows, painted around 1710, depicts a diplomat who served under Oliver Cromwell and continued in government service after the Restoration — one of the continuities across the constitutional ruptures of the seventeenth century. Meadows's long career, spanning from the Interregnum through the Restoration and into the Hanoverian period, made him an unusually durable figure in English public life. Kneller's portrait of this elderly survivor of successive political regimes preserves the image of a man who had seen the Commonwealth, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, and the Act of Union, and who had served each in succession. The 1710 date places this in Meadows's extreme old age, when he was in his eighties.

Kneller renders the elderly diplomat with his characteristic combination of efficient technique and dignified presentation, the formal pose and sober costume befitting a man of public service.