National Galleries of Scotland

William Graham was well-known for his dislike of Covenanters. He was President of the Privy Council, Lord President of the Court of Session, and advised Charles I on political matters in his Scottish kingdom. His fall from grace was provoked by his pursuit of an old genealogical claim to the earldom of Strathearn, which his enemies presented as a challenge to the Scottish throne. Jamesone painted this portrait and that of Archibald Napier on separate canvases, but they are now joined together in their early nineteenth-century frame. They were painted for the artist’s great patron, Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, as part of his series of portraits of friends and family.