Thomas Coningsby, Earl Coningsby, and his Two Daughters, with the Tower of London in the Background

This 1722 group portrait of Thomas Coningsby, Earl Coningsby, with his daughters and the Tower of London in the background combines family portraiture with a politically significant architectural symbol. Coningsby was a prominent Whig politician who had served as a lord justice of Ireland, and his inclusion of the Tower — seat of royal power and prison for the politically disgraced — in his family portrait's background carried implicit references to the constitutional order his Whiggism had helped establish. The combination of family tenderness with political iconography was unusual in English portraiture, and the Tower's presence gives this composition a historical weight beyond the conventional family group.

The group composition arranges the family figures before the architectural backdrop with Kneller's characteristic efficiency, the Tower of London rendered as a recognizable symbol of royal authority and national history.