Portrait of William Aird, member of the Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire Foxhounds, full-length, in hunting dress, standing by a green draped table, his right hand resting on a newspaper

The sitter was a member of the Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire hunt. The Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire foxhounds were formed in 1771 as an amalgamation of the Glasgow hounds, and the hounds of Captain Robertson. During the early nineteenth century Viscount Kelburn (afterwards 5<->th<-> Earl of Glasgow) led the hunt, and brought both money and a selective breeding process to the hunt. Under his leadership the hounds were praised by Nimrod; 'I thought them to the eye, equal to, if not superior to any other in Scotland. And why should they not be so? They are blood of the most celebrated in England, the Lambton, and Beaufort'.

Sir Daniel Macnee, who was born at Fintry in Stirlingshire, Scotland, was apprenticed at the outset of his artistic career to the landscape painter John Knox. He later studied at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh where he established himself as a portrait painter. He was admitted to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1829 of which he was eventually to be elected President in 1876.