A full-length portrait facing slightly left of Robert Osboldston, seated at a table in a blue silk robe, lined with orange silk, and wearing a brown full-bottomed wig. He wears buckled shoes. To his right, his arm rests on a table covered with velvet, and on which an inkwell and papers are placed. He holds a quill pen in his right hand. Osboldston was a very wealthy man, who was a generous benefactor to Greenwich Hospital, granting extensive lands and bequeathing it £20,000, and the dues paid by ships passing his North and South Foreland lighthouses. (The former had been rebuilt by and the latter built by his grandfather, also Robert, about 1658-59, and he had inherited them from his father, William, a London mercer.) To denote this bequest, an impression of the Hospital and the river with shipping can be seen through a window to the right of the sitter. This painting is a copy of an original also painted by Charles D'Agar, which was owned by Admiral Lord Matthew Aylmer, the Governor of the Hospital. It was a posthumous replica commissioned by the Directors of the Hospital in 1717 to hang in the Council Room, where it was recorded still over the fireplace in 1840. The Governors ordered the frame for it from Howard, frame-maker, for 15 guineas in May 1718 and D'Agar's bill of 24 guineas was authorized for payment in October that year. The sitter's name is sometimes given as Osbaldeston (a known variant) but appears to wrong in this case. [PvdM revised 7/10]