The sitter was the eldest son of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover and his wife Sophia (see the next lot). In 1682, he married his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, with whom he had two children. The marriage was dissolved in 1694. After the death of his mother in 1714, George became the heir to the British throne. Queen Anne died just a few weeks later, and George ascended to the throne as the first Hanoverian monarch, King George I. Attempts by the Jacobites to depose George and replace him with Anne's Catholic half-brother, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, failed. He was succeeded by his son, George II (see lot 119).