The sitter, the most important Scottish publisher of his day and friend of Sir Walter Scott, was the son of Thomas Constable, steward to the Earl of Kellie. He set up his own printing shop in Edinburgh at the age of twenty-one. Within seven years Constable had risen to prominence with the publication of the Edinburgh Review and achieved the envy of his rivals by paying the highest prices for contributions and still being the most profitable publication in Edinburgh. In 1812 he purchased the copyright and stock of the Encyclopoedia Britannica and in 1814 he started publishing Scott's Waverly Novels. The collapse of his London agents, J. Ballantyne and Co., in 1826, in connection with the publication of Sir Walter Scott's novels, forced Constable into bankruptcy.