Sir Simon Le Blanc (1748/1749–1816), Fellow (1779–1799)

Sir Simon Le Blanc was a lawyer and judge who became a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, before pursuing a distinguished legal career culminating in appointment as a judge of the King's Bench. His portrait by Opie, held at Trinity Hall, is one of numerous academic portraits commissioned by Cambridge and Oxford colleges to record distinguished fellows and masters. Academic portraiture formed a steady strand of Opie's practice, and the combination of legal and academic distinction in Le Blanc gave the painter a subject of clear intellectual weight. Trinity Hall, founded in 1350, has one of the oldest portrait collections in Cambridge, and Opie's contribution sits within a tradition stretching back to Tudor painting. The legal profession's interest in portraiture was consistent — courts and Inns of Court accumulated portraits of distinguished practitioners as institutional memory.

Academic portraits typically required formal academic or legal dress — gown, possibly wig, and the accessories of scholarly or legal office. Opie's handling of such subjects maintains his characteristic bold modelling while respecting the conventions of institutional portraiture. The face is the expressive centre, with dress and setting serving as contextual markers.