Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 2nd Bt

Sir Robert Inglis was the Tory MP for Oxford University, a bastion of conservative Anglicanism, and one of the most vocal opponents of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. Hayter’s 1838 portrait in the National Portrait Gallery captures a figure whose High Church convictions placed him firmly against the progressive tide. Inglis represented the traditional Anglican establishment’s resistance to the secularizing reforms of the 1830s. 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.

Hayter renders the conservative MP with appropriate gravity, the firm features and steady gaze conveying the moral certainty of a man who rarely doubted his principles.