Simon Harcourt (1661–1727), First Viscount Harcourt

This portrait of Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt, depicts the Lord Chancellor who served under Queen Anne and helped manage the transition between the Whig-dominated ministries of Marlborough and the Tory government that negotiated the Peace of Utrecht. Harcourt's political career took him from the Tory ministry of Anne's final years through the Jacobite scare of the 1715 rising, and his survival as a public figure despite these political complexities reflects the pragmatic navigation that characterized Hanoverian-era politics. Kneller's portrait of this major legal and political figure demonstrates his central role in recording the English establishment through the constitutional upheavals of the early eighteenth century.

The Lord Chancellor is presented with appropriate judicial gravity, Kneller's practiced brush capturing the formal wig and robes of office with the confident efficiency of long experience in official portraiture.