William Hart Coleridge (1789–1849), Bishop of Barbados

Phillips's portrait of William Hart Coleridge, first Bishop of Barbados from 1825 documents the early Victorian expansion of Anglican church infrastructure to the West Indies following emancipation—or rather anticipating it, since emancipation came in 1833. The establishment of a separate bishopric for Barbados in 1824 was part of the Church of England's effort to extend its pastoral reach to enslaved and free Black populations in the Caribbean, and William Hart Coleridge—nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge—was its first bishop. Phillips's portrait served the institutional documentation of a significant moment in Anglican missionary history, and the sitter's family connections to the most celebrated of Romantic poets gave the commission an additional cultural resonance.

The episcopal portrait follows conventional format, with Coleridge's clerical dress and potentially his bishop's regalia establishing his ecclesiastical identity. Phillips's handling is professional and straightforward. The face is rendered with individual attention that distinguishes this from a generic clerical portrait.