John Hervey, Baron Hervey of Ickworth (1696-1743) Holding the Purse of Office as Lord Privy...

Lord Hervey is here shown holding his purse of office as Keeper of the Privy Seal, a position that he held between 1740 and 1742. He was the eldest son of John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol (1665-1751) and Elizabeth Felton, his second wife. In 1720 he married Mary Lepel, maid-of-honour to the Princess of Wales. He was an intimate of Queen Caroline, becoming Vice-Chamberlain in 1730, but afterwards joining the Opposition. Van Loo and his studio assistant, John Giles Eccardt, seem themselves to have been responsible for a number of portraits of John, Lord Hervey, in various formats. This picture was painted towards the end of Van Loo’s time in England, when he was suffering from ill-health, which would account for the degree of what appears to be studio assistance. It is however, the kind of portrait, of the sitter as office-holder, at which the French, more than the English, excelled.