William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford

This 1690 portrait of William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford, depicts the head of one of England's wealthiest and most politically influential families at the consolidation of the Glorious Revolution. The Russells had been prominent Whig families for decades — William Russell's son had been executed for alleged complicity in the Rye House Plot in 1683, a Whig martyrdom that strengthened the family's identification with constitutional liberty. The 1st Duke's portrait by Kneller places him at the beginning of the Hanoverian era that his family's political principles had helped create, the founder of a dynasty that would continue as political power in England through successive generations.

The ducal portrait presents Russell with the authoritative dignity appropriate to the head of a great Whig dynasty, Kneller's broad, confident rendering of the costume and pose conveying established aristocratic power.