Sir Edward Turner 2nd Bt. (1719-1766) was the third and only surviving son of Sir Edward Turner 1st Bt. (1691-1735) and his wife, Mary Page. Sir Edward had been a director and chairman of the East India Company and a director of the ill-fated South Seas Company. The Turners were a wealthy family of merchants and small landowners whose fortune had been founded in the late sixteenth century. Mary Page was the daughter of Sir Gregory Page 1st Bt. of Wricklemarsh and elder sister and heiress of Sir Gregory Page 2nd Bt. (1689-1775). Sir Edward, the sitter of the present picture, was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1745. He sat as M.P. for Bedwyn from 1741-1747, for Oxford from 1754-1761 and for Penrhyn from 1761-1766. Not only did Sir Edward inherit his father's estates at the age of 16, but he was also the heir to the fortune of his great-uncle Edward Turner, a highly successful merchant, and to the estates of his uncle John Turner (d. 1760) in Middlesex. This pattern of inheritance was to be repeated in the next generation. In 1739 he married Cassandra Leigh (1723-1770), daughter of William Leigh of Adlestrop, and the present picture was painted the following year, presumably to celebrate their marriage. Sir Edward and Lady Turner had two sons and two daughters, the eldest of whom Sir Gregory Page-Turner (1748-1805) succeeded as 3rd Baronet and married Frances Howell. In addition to inheriting the Ambroseden estates of his father's family, Gregory succeeded to the fortune and estates of his two great-uncles; Sir Gregory Page 2nd Bt. who had commissioned the architect John James (1672-1746), Hawksmoor's clerk of works at Greenwich, to design and build the vast Palladian mansion Wricklemarsh House, near Greenwich on the outskirts of London; and on the death of his great-aunt the Hon. Judith Page, wife of Sir Gregory's brother Thomas, he inherited the Battlesden estates in Bedfordshire. In 1775 Gregory assumed by Royal Licence the additional surname and arms of Page. Despite possessing, by fortuitous inheritance, one of the largest fortunes in England and an income of #24,000 per anum, Sir Gregory Page-Turner pulled down 'for reason of economy' Wricklemarsh, the magnificent contents of which he sold, and Ambroseden. The superb three-quarter length portrait of him by Pompeo Batoni was sold in these Rooms 2 July 1976 lot 68 (now Manchester City Art Gallery).

John (1757-1797), the second son of Sir Edward and Lady Turner married Elizabeth Dryden, heiress and niece of Sir John Dryden 7th Bt. (1st Creation) (d. 1770) of Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire. Elizabeth's great-great grandfather was John Dryden (1631-1700) the great Restoration poet. John Turner who assumed the name and arms of Dryden was created a baronet of the 2nd creating. Elizabeth (d. 1816) the elder daughter married Thomas Twistleton, 13th Lord Saye and Sele, of Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire. Cassandra (d. 1813) married Martin Bladen Hawke, 2nd Lord Hawke, son of Admiral Lord Hawke, victor of the Battle of Quiberon Bay (1759). Cassandra was also an amateur novelist, her best known work being Julie de Grammont (1788).

The artist had returned to London in June 1738 having had two years in Italy studying the Antique and working in artist's studios in Rome and Naples, most noteably in that of Francesco Solimena in which he met and worked with the young Pompeo Batoni who was to become the main portrait painter of visitors to Rome in the middle of the century. Whilst in Italy Ramsay had begun to perfect his anatomical drawings, with special emphasis on the drawing of hands, for which many sketches exist. In London Ramsay had set himself up in a studio in Covent Garden and by December 1738 was already establishing sufficient a reputation for the antiquary Alexander Gordon to write:

"young Allan Ramsey [sic], whom I venture to call one the first rate portrait painters in London, nay I may say Europe......'tis not my own opinion, but that of all the conosseurs [sic] in London"

The format of the present picture in which a standing and a seated figure, the latter in profile are placed in a conversational relationship was taken up by the artist in 1765 in Horace Walpole's Neices the Hon. Laura Keppel and Charlotte, Lady Huntingtower (Private Collection, U.S.A.). The present picture is the first grand statement of the newly-married artist's virtuosity and skill after his return from Italy and can be seen as the prelude to the Mansel Family (Tate Gallery, London) of 1742 a more ambitious group portrait. Prof. Smart (op.cit., p. 104) wrote: "It would be difficult to point to a more sensitive expression of conjugal affection in British portraiture of the eighteenth century"