The sitter was son of the 9th Baron Paget (later Earl of Uxbridge) and brother of the famous Earl of Uxbridge who lost a leg at the Battle of Waterloo. Sir Edward Paget (1775-1849), joined the Army in the 1st Life Guards in March 1792. He moved to the 28th Foot and with this Regiment he served with Lord Moira in the campaign in Flanders and Holland. In 1796, by now a Lieut.-Colonel in the 28th Foot, he went to Gibraltar, and for the next five years he served in the Mediterranean. He was at the capture of Minorca in 1798, and in the same year became a Colonel and Aide-de-Camp to the King; he subsequently served with Sir Ralph Abercromby in Cairo and Alexandria. On his return to England in 1803 he was appointed Brigadier-General on the staff in Ireland. During the next few years he was posted to Bremen, again to the Mediterranean, Sicily, Sweden and Portugal. Under Sir John Moore he was at the Battle of Corunna on 16 January 1809, and then in the Peninsular with the Duke of Wellington, where he lost an arm in the action at Oporto on 12 May and returned home. He was with Wellington again as his second-in-command, and was captured at Burgos in 1813. He was promoted Colonel of the 28th Foot in 1815, and General on 27 May 1825.

A group portrait, which had been painted by Chinnery, in Calcutta in 1822, of his wife Lady Harriet Paget and five of their children, was sold in these Rooms on 16 April 1982, lot 99.