The present miniature derives from a large-scale portrait by Allan Ramsay in which the sitter is depicted in a red coat, seated, with a letter in one hand, a quill in the other. The painting is now in the collection of the Trustees of the Chevening Estate and the sitter died a few months after it was completed (see A. Smart, Allan Ramsay. A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, New Haven and London, 1999, p. 154, no. 345, illustrated p. 362, fig. 551).