Sir Robert Walpole
After Jean-Baptiste Vanloo French
John Faber, the Younger British
Sitter Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford British
Not on view
Walpole served his Whig allies in Parliament, and the monarchs George I and II, with great skill helping to secure the Hanoverian succession. He is now considered Britain's first defacto Prime Minister (the term did not come into use until the nineteenth century). Walpole is here portrayed as First Commissioner, or Lord, of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, offices that gave him significant control over government spending. Walpole wears a brocaded coat, long wig and sash hung with the Garter emblem. His right hand supports the Lord Chancellor's burse which is decorated with his coat-of-arms. Beyond a column and balustrade at right, a Roman statue indicates the sitter's political beliefs and oratory skills. Vanloo's painting hung in the Blue Damask Bedroom at Houghton until 1779 when sold by the sitter's grandson, George Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford (1730–1791) to Empress Catherine the Great.
