Portrait of George Hardinge, Attorney General, M.P., (1743-1816), half-length, in a black coat, holding a book in his right hand

The sitter was born at Canbury Manor, near Kingston, Surrey, the eldest son of Nicholas Hardinge, barrister, scholar and politician, and Jane, daughter of Sir John Pratt of Wildernesse, Kent, and sister of Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. He followed his father's footsteps and entered the Middle Temple in 1764 and was called to the bar five years later. In April 1782, he was appointed Solicitor-General to Queen Charlotte and by 1794, was promoted to the post of Attorney-General to the Queen, a position that he held until his death. He also had political ambitions and unsuccessfully lobbied his friend Horace Walpole for a position in 1782. In 1784 he became M.P. for Old Sarum and was subsequently returned in 1787, 1790, 1796 and 1801. He was also an author and among his most important works were Rowley and Chatterton in the Shades (1782), a series of letters to Edmund Burke (1791) and Some account of the life and writings of John Dryden (1800). In April 1788 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

He married Lucy, daughter of Richard Long of Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, in 1777, and they moved into Ragman's Castle, Twickenham, close to his friends, Walpole and the poet Richard Owen Cambridge. The marriage was not successful and they separated in 1805. Although he had no children of his own, Hardinge adopted George Nicholas Hardinge, son of his brother Henry Hardinge.