Portrait of Thomas Braddyll (d. 1776), three-quarter-length, in Van Dyck costume, his right hand resting on a plumed hat on a table

The sitter was the son of Dodding Braddyll, M.P., of Conishead Priory, Cumbria. Thomas was appointed High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1762, but died, unmarried, four years later, leaving Conishead to Wilson Gale (1756-1818), his first cousin once removed. Wilson, who changed his name to Gale-Braddyll, was a significant patron of Hudson's pupil, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds's group portrait of The Braddyll Family, painted in 1789, is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and that of Wilson's wife, Jane, executed the previous year, can be found in the Wallace Collection, London.