John Dormer

This 1707 portrait of John Dormer depicts a member of the English Catholic gentry who navigated the religious disabilities imposed after the Glorious Revolution — the Test Acts, the bar on Catholic officeholding, and the social exclusion that followed from the constitutional settlement's identification of Protestantism with English liberty. English Catholic families like the Dormers maintained their faith through the eighteenth century despite these disadvantages, and their portraits by Protestant court painters like Kneller document a community living at the margins of political life while sharing its social structures. Kneller's willingness to paint Catholic as well as Protestant subjects reflects his professional neutrality.

The portrait presents Dormer with the dignified restraint characteristic of Kneller's rendering of the Catholic gentry, the sober composition reflecting both the sitter's social standing and the discretion required of English Catholic families.