Daniel Parke II (1664-1710)

Daniel Parke was the son of Daniel Parke and Rebecca Evelyn Parke. He married Jane Ludwell in ca. 1685. His two legitimate daughters who survived to adulthood were Frances Parke (Mrs. John Custis) and Lucy Parke (Mrs. William Byrd II). He left his family in Virginia behind and sought a career in England. He served as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough and was appointed Governor of the Leeward Islands, where he moved in 1706. Between 1704 and 1706, he commissioned two identical portraits from John Closterman and sent them back to Virginia. This one descended with the Byrd family at Westover and other descended with the Custis family and remains in a private collection. There are at least three other known portraits of this subject – by Michael Dahl, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and an unknown artist.

Dimensions: 50 x 40 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm.)

The subject wears a gold-trimmed orange coat, a richly embroidered brocaded blue waistcoat, and a gold brocade sash tied around his waist. He wears a gray wig. A miniature portrait of Queen Anne surrounded in diamonds hangs on his neck from a red ribbon. His right hand is on his hip and his left hand rests on a stone ledge. A suit of armor is visible on the left of canvas on top of gold medals. A helmet is partially visible on the right. A rocky outcropping is on the right and a view of mountains, water, and firing cannon is on the left.

See: Encyclopedia Virginia; Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (2013), 83; Richard H. Saunders and Ellen G. Miles, American Colonial Portraits, 1770-1776 (1987), 83.