The Tansey Miniatures Foundation

Die Miniatur Über den Künstler

The Tansey Miniatures Foundation

DE
The Miniature About the Artist

George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland (after Kneller)

English

This miniature portrait of the British king George I (1660–1727) was painted by an unknown English enamellist as a detail copied from the official state portrait painted by Godfrey Kneller in 1714. It shows the first British king from the House of Hanover in the regalia of the Order of the Garter, wearing a large allongé wig and an ermine cloak, and with his right hand resting on the orb.1 Here the artist depicted the king in a bust portrait, with the order’s grand chain following the rounded shape of the miniature’s frame. George I was the first British Hanoverian monarch in the personal union that lasted for 123 years and during which a total of five kings from the House of Hanover ruled consecutively in Great Britain.

George was the son of Elector Ernest Augustus of Hanover and Sophia of the Palatinate. In 1698 he became Elector of Hanover, and in 1714 he acceded to the British throne upon the death of the English queen Anne (2016-19). This was the result of the English parliament’s decision to allow only a Protestant to inherit the throne. In 1701 the Act of Settlement determined that Sophia of the Palatinate, a granddaughter of James I, would inherit the crown upon the death of Queen Anne. But as she herself died a few weeks before Anne, the crown passed to her son George Louis.

J. S. O.

1 The original is in the National Portrait Gallery, London, inv. no. NPG 5174. The portrait was disseminated in numerous graphic prints and copied by several artists in large format and in miniature (cf. e.g. the life-size portraits in the Herrenhausen Palace Museum, Hanover, a copy by Joachim Kayser in the Residenzmuseum in Celle Castle, inv. no. LN 22, or the miniature painted by Bernard Lens in 1718, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, inv. no. P.64-1987).