The Right Honourable Peter King (c.1669–1734), Baron of Ockham, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain and the First Recorder of Glastonbury

Godfrey Kneller's portrait of Peter King, Lord Chancellor and first Recorder of Glastonbury (c. 1685), belongs to the vast output of the German-born painter who dominated English portraiture from the 1680s to the 1720s. Kneller painted virtually every person of significance in Restoration and early Georgian England — monarchs, politicians, wits, soldiers, scientists — creating a visual record of the establishment that is unmatched in scope. Peter King rose to become Lord Chancellor in 1725; this early portrait, now in Glastonbury Town Hall, shows him before his elevation, in the pose and format Kneller had standardized for professional and political sitters.

Kneller's studio formula is efficiently deployed: three-quarter length, formal costume, architectural or curtained background, confident execution. The face receives most careful attention — Kneller's psychological acuity in rendering character distinguishes even his more formulaic productions. The brushwork is broad and confident, the likeness primary.