Sir John Willes (1685–1761)

Sir John Willes served as Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1737 to 1761 and was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Since Willes died in 1761 and Hayter painted this around 1832, the portrait is a posthumous copy, likely commissioned for All Souls’ collection of distinguished members. The College’s tradition of commissioning portrait copies maintained visual links with its historical alumni. George Hayter was the preeminent British history and portrait painter of the early Victorian era, appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1841.

Working from an earlier prototype, Hayter produces a competent judicial portrait in the formal conventions of eighteenth-century legal portraiture. The wig and robes are handled with practiced facility.