The present picture relates to similar versions in the Bristol Collection at Ickworth, and in the National Portrait Gallery. Charles Watson-Wentworth succeeded his father as Marquis of Rockingham and entered politics as first Lord of the Treasury and a Privy Councillor. As a political crony of Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke, Rockingham led the peace negotiations with the newly formed United States of America though at his death in 1782 these had not been completed