Portrait of a gentleman, traditionally identified as Sir John Penruddock (c.1591-1648), standing three-quarter-length, wearing a black suit with white collar and sleeves, leaning on a stone pedestal, a landscape beyond

This painting repeats the composition of a portrait given to van Dyck by Erik Larsen, whose whereabouts are unknown (op. cit., no. 947, illus. p. 371). The sitter has traditionally been identified as Sir John Penruddock (c.1591-1648) of Compton Chamberlayne, Wiltshire, who came from a well established landed family in Wiltshire. He matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford on 1 July 1608 aged seventeen and was admitted at Gray's Inn on 18 March 1608⁄9. Sir John is recorded as Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1635, and was appointed a Commissioner of Array by King Charles I to muster a Royalist Army in Wiltshire for the Civil War. He married Joan Meade and had four sons, receiving the D.C.L. from Oxford in 1643, the year in which he was knighted. He was a recusant and is now best known as the father of Colonal John Penruddock (c.1620-1655), who led arising against Oliver Cromwell and was executed at Exeter in 1655.