Lot Essay
The sitters are presumed to be Henry Bankes (d. 1776) of Corfe Castle, MP and Commissioner of the Customs, and his second wife, Margaret Wynne, daughter of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and their son, Henry (d. 1834). Henry, Member of Parliament for Dorset, as his father had been, was also the author of The Civil and Constitutional History of Rome from the Foundation to the Age of Augustus (1818). He married Frances Woodley, daughter of the Lieutenant-Governor of Antigua.