Thomas Wentworth was created 1st Earl of Strafford in 1639/40. He began his career as a member of the Popular Party but soon became one of King Charles I's strongest supporters. However, his politics attracted many enemies and in 1640 a successful Bill of Attainder was brought against him in the House of Lords to which King Charles I reluctantly assented. He was executed on Tower Hill on 12 May 1663.
The present picture relates to the original (see Erik Larsen, The Paintings of Van Dyck, II, Dusseldorf, 1988, under no. 1004, p. 393-4).
In the 1864 catalogue of pictures at Oulton Park (op. cit.), the following lines, with reference to the picture's exhibition at the British Institution in 1864, are quoted: 'The palm of interest in portraiture this year must be awarded to Vandyck's stately Strafford, not the famous Fitzwilliam portrait of him, with his Secretary, but a hardly inferior half-length, in full armour, belonging to Sir Philip de Malpas Grey Egerton. This is indeed the complete presentment of a powerful individuality, done without affectation or effort, yet with consummate conscientiousness, as if the courtly and pleasure-loving painter had been for the while both sobered and dignified by the character of his sitter'.