Kitty Hunter, daughter of Thomas Orby Hunter of Croyland Abbey, Lincolnshire, was Maid of Honor to Queen Charlotte and gained considerable notoriety by her elopement in 1762 with Lord Pembroke, at that time Lord of the Bedchamber to King George III. The venetian mask may allude to the masked ball given by Lord Middleton, the night prior to the couple's elopement. She had a son by him, who later became Colonel Montgomery and was shot in a duel, and later married the future Field Marshall Sir Alfred Clarke.

It is likely that the composition derives from a mezzotint by Richard Purcell in reverse, after Pierre-Louis Surugue's engraving of Charles Coypel's portrait of Madame de Marchy (see the catalogue of the exhibition Reynolds, ed. N. Penny, 1986, pp. 212-3, fig. 67).

The original composition whose whereabouts is unknown, was exhibited at the British Institution in 1856 (see Reynolds, loc. cit., fig. 66).