William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield

Jean-Baptiste van Loo's portrait of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, painted in 1737 and now in the National Portrait Gallery, depicts one of the most important jurists in British legal history. Mansfield, who served as Lord Chief Justice from 1756 to 1788, made landmark decisions on contract law and was among the first British judges to question the legality of slavery in England. Van Loo was a French-trained painter of Flemish descent who spent several successful years in London in the 1730s. This early portrait captures Murray as a rising lawyer before his elevation to the peerage, giving it historical significance as a document of a great career in its formative stage.

Van Loo presents Murray in legal robes against a warm interior backdrop, deploying the standard vocabulary of Baroque official portraiture absorbed in Paris and Rome. The face is characterized with clear, cool light. Silk robes and legal dress are rendered with practiced attention to reflective surfaces.