The present drawing is possibly related to an oil portrait of Pope by Richardson, currently in the Collection at Petworth House, West Sussex. Richardson himself was a prolific writer on art publishing An Essay on the Theory of Painting in 1715, and had a wide readership at a time when middle-class as well as aristocratic English men and women were purchasing unprecedented numbers of pictures. Both Richardson and his son Jonathan were encouraged in their literary aspirations by Pope who mentions them in his diaries as "two such lovers of the fine arts" (The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. G.Sherburn, 5 vols., 1956, vol. 2., pp. 140-141.). Richardson executed numerous pencil drawings of Pope, reproductions of which can be found in the Heinz Archive at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Box 196/7.