Sir Robert Murray Keith (1730–1795), Diplomat and Ambassador to Denmark

Sir Robert Murray Keith, painted in 1795, was a distinguished soldier and diplomat who served as British ambassador to Vienna and Copenhagen, and whose memoirs provide invaluable accounts of European court life in the later eighteenth century. By 1795, when this portrait was painted, Dance had largely retired from professional practice and become a Member of Parliament himself—making this a relatively late work. Keith's long diplomatic career gave him unusual access to the courts of Central Europe during the period of the French Revolution's destabilization of the old order. Dance renders the aging diplomat in the formal dress of his office, the portrait a record of a distinguished public life.

The late portrait shows Dance-Holland's mature manner, with a somewhat broader handling than his earlier works and a restrained color scheme appropriate to the formal requirements of diplomatic portraiture.