Henry Sidney (c.1655)
by
Sir Peter Lely
Lely (1618 - 1680) was a Dutch artist who spent most of his adult life working in England, where he he was a highly sought-after portrait painter.
The subject of this painting, Henry Sidney (1641 - 1704), later first Earl of Romney, was the son of Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leister. This painting was also published as a mezzotint in the early 1680s by Alexander Browne (? - 1706), a well-known artist and printseller of the time, and one of the first publishers of mezzotints.
The Earl of Romney played a very significant role in English political history: he was the principal author of the 1688 letter inviting William of Orange to "invade" England and depose the current king, James II. (James' Catholicism and close ties to France were highly problematic, and when he fathered a male heir, making it appear England could again become a Catholic country, opposition against him culminated in his dethroning; William and his wife, Mary, became the new rulers of England as a result of the almost-bloodless coup, known as the "Glorious Revolution." )
As for the dog: while it's impossible to say for certain, it's possible, given the dog's size and coloring, that the dog in this portrait could well be a very early Newfoundland, or, perhaps, a representative of a progenitor breed. At the same time, it is entirely possible that the dog never existed, as it was hardly unusual for portrait painters of the time to add dogs to their portraits of upper-class subjects as signifiers of wealth and/or cultural sophistication. And Henry Sidney's garb indicates that this is highly romanticized portaiture.
I have not been able to find a color image of this work.