John Potenger (1600-1659) was a Scholar of Winchester College (admitted 1611); Fellow of New College, Oxford, 1620-1642; Headmaster of Winchester College, 1642-1653.

The portrait shows Potenger as Subwarden of New College, with the walls of Oxford and the famous New College mound in the background. There is an inscription on the folded sheet of paper by the sitter’s left hand, only parts of which remain legible:

‘To the… & my worthy frend Mr. John / Potenger Bac. of Divinity & Subwarden / of New Colledge in Oxford / ……. P….. the vi….. Image & Expresst / Representation [of him?] in ye yeare of / [his] Age & of ye Lorde 1637 ….. / Nov: 3. I doe [here] Present / Francis .….’

An attribution to Francis Potter (1594-1678) was first suggested by John Harvey in the 1950s and is entirely plausible. Potter was a churchman, a Fellow of Trinity College, and an amateur artist. His painting of Thomas Pope at Trinity is similar in style to the present picture. He is also the only artist named Francis known to have been active in Oxford in this period.

The painting hung for several centuries at Bingham’s Melcombe in Dorset, where Potenger’s son (also John) lived following the marriage of his daughter Philadelphia to Richard Bingham (1667-1735).

Provenance: The sitter, thence by descent to his son John Potenger (d. 1733) and granddaughter Philadelphia Bingham (d. 1757) of Bingham’s Melton, Dorset; sold with the contents of Bingham’s Melton to Reginald Bosworth Smith in 1895; by descent to his daughter, Ellinor, Lady Grogan, by whom bequeathed to Winchester College in 1948.

Location: College Hall