Portrait of Ralph Crathorne (d. 1755), of Ness Hall, North Riding, Yorkshire, full-length, seated at a table with grapes, peaches, a riding hat, a hammer and a pruning knife, in a landscape, gesturing to a vinery wall, in a landscape

The sitter is descended from the ancient family of Crathorne, or Crathorne Cleveland, Yorkshire, who had lived at Ness since the 14th century. The gardens, which still flourish today, were originally designed to embellish an earlier Jacobean manor, demolished and replaced by the present Hall in 1814. Ralph, the son of Thomas Crathorne (d. 1739) and Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Cockayne, Viscount Cullen, was a particularly enthusiastic gardener, leaving instructions in his will of 1752 that his arbours, vines and flower beds should be maintained after he died. The double vinery wall to which he proudly gestures in this painting is likely to be the south facing wall of the walled garden, the outer section of which still stands today. A second, surviving vinery wall runs beside Salton Lane to the east of the farm buildings. Ralph married Catherine, daughter of John Killingbeck, and had two children, who died young, so was succeeded by a nephew Thomas Crathorne. Mercier, the celebrated portraitist of French Huguenot origin, was in York between 1739 and 1751, with brief visits to Ireland (1747) and Scotland (1750).

The Ness estate was sold to the Kendall family in 1788. Thomas Kendall, who built the present Hall and created a new entrance to the garden through an impressive wrought-iron gate, is rumoured to have allowed his sons, both Masters of the Sinnington hunt, to set hounds into the walled garden for the first draw.