George Smallridge (1662–1719), Bishop of Bristol

This 1714 portrait of George Smallridge, Bishop of Bristol, depicts a High Church clergyman who was sympathetic to the Jacobite cause. Smallridge's appointment to Bristol in 1714, just before Queen Anne's death, placed him at the center of the political crisis surrounding the Hanoverian succession. Kneller dominated British portraiture for nearly half a century as Principal Painter successively to Charles II, James II, William III, and Queen Anne, producing vast output through a studio system...

The episcopal portrait renders Smallridge in clerical vestments with Kneller's practiced efficiency, the bishop's scholarly features and dignified bearing typical of the artist's approach to ecclesiastical portraiture.