English: Circle of Sir Peter Lely

Portrait of John, 1st Lord Crew of Stene (1598 - 1679), half-length, wearing peer's robes

inscribed upper left: Iohn L. Crewe/ Grandfather to the / Ds of Kent

oil on canvas, oval

78.8 by 64.1 cm.; 31 by 25 1/4 in.

A head and shoulders version of a portrait of John, 1st Lord Crew of Stene, recorded as having been at Stene House, and later at Wrest Park. Other versions are recorded; one in the Engleheart collection, another also in the collection at Wrest Park that was sold along with the present work in the 1917 Christie's sale (see Provenance), lot 82.

John Crew was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Crew (1566–1634), Speaker of the House of Commons, and his wife Temperance (1580/81–1619), daughter of Reginald Bray of Steane (or Stene), Northamptonshire. A member of Gray's Inn, Crew matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford and was called to the bar in 1624. A moderate parliamentarian during the Civil War, he sat in the House of Commons on and off, for a number of constituencies, from 1624 to 1661 when Charles II created him Baron Crew of Stene. Crew married Jemimah (1601/2–1675), daughter of Edward Waldegrave of Lawford Hall, Essex, with whom he had six sons and two daughters, including Thomas Crew, 2nd Baron (see lot 184).