Edward Tenison (c.1673–1735), Undergraduate (1691–1695), Bishop of Ossory (1731–1735)

This portrait of Edward Tenison, who became Bishop of Ossory in the Church of Ireland, depicts a figure of the Protestant Ascendancy that governed Ireland throughout the eighteenth century. The Tenison family's ecclesiastical prominence — Archbishop Thomas Tenison of Canterbury was a connection — placed Edward within the network of Church of England and Church of Ireland clergy who occupied the upper levels of Hanoverian institutional life. Kneller's portraits of Church of Ireland bishops and clergy document the Anglican establishment in Ireland alongside his better-known portraits of the English church hierarchy, providing a comprehensive image of the clerical elite that governed Irish religious life under British rule.

The clerical portrait follows Kneller's established formula for churchmen, with ecclesiastical dress and scholarly bearing rendered in the efficient manner of his most practiced period.