Henry Bone was born in Truro, Cornwall, in 1755, and died in nearby Somerstown in 1834. In 1771 Bone was apprenticed to William Cookworthy, founder of the Plymouth porcelain works, and the first manufacturer of "hard-paste" china in England. He moved with his master to Bristol the next year and remained at the Bristol china works for six years, "working from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and at night studying drawing." When the works failed in 1778, he moved to London "with one guinea of his own in his pocket and five pounds borrowed from a friend," and found work enamelling watches, fans and boxes, before eventually establishing a reputation as a painter of miniatures. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780, was appointed enamel painter to the Prince of Wales in 1800, and to George III in 1801, continuing to hold the appointment in the next two reigns. In 1831, three years before his death, his sight failed. His collections were sold by Christie's on 22 April 1836, though there were other important disposals of his works in the 1840's and 50's. This portrait, although a watercolour, shows all the skill of the "prince of enamelers" who, according to the Dictionary of National Biography "has rarely, if ever, been equalled." The blue boy's hair and eyes, even his eyelashes, are painted with extraordinary verisimilitude, as is the graining of the wood on the bat held so naturally over one shoulder of his blue suit.