Portrait of the Rt. Hon. Thomas Grenville, M.P. (1755-1846), half-length, in a grey coat and a white cravat

The sitter was the third son of George Grenville (d. 1770) and elder brother of William Wyndham Grenville, later Lord Grenville (d. 1834). He served as M.P. for Aldeburgh (1790-1796) and Buckingham (1796-1809). Fox chose him as envoy to the peace negotiations at Paris in 1782, and he was appointed President of the Board of Control and 1st Lord of the Admiralty in his brother's shortlived adminstration in 1806. On the fall of the Grenville adminstration in March 1807 he largely withdrew from public life to concentrate on literature and the formation of a notable library which he bequeathed to the British Museum.