This engaging portrait belongs to the period in Danloux's career after he had fled France and the Revolution for England in 1792. It was during these years that he became strongly influenced by the fashionable English portrait painters Thomas Lawrence, John Hoppner and, in particular, George Romney.
His reputation in England was established with the exhibition of the Foster Children at the Royal Accademy, in 1793. This led to a number of commissions from British patrons taking him to Portsmouth in August 1795, and to Scotland in the autumn of 1796 where he painted the portrait of the Comte d'Artois, now in the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, and the group portrait of the Family of the Duke of Buccleuch (private collection).