The subject, William Wyndham, Lord Grenville, was an English politician who became Prime Minister from 1806 to 1807, and afterwards leader of the Whig party for ten years. He was brought up by his uncle, Earl Temple, the influential politician and patron of the arts who had created Stowe in the eighteenth century, who took care in supervising Wyndham's education at Eton and Oxford. Lord Grenville is depicted with his head slightly raised and turned, dressed in the classical manner with a cloak loosely arranged over his shoulders and with contemporary short curly hair. The bust was acquired by George IV when Prince Regent, who between 1804 and 1815 commissioned the celebrated sculptor Joseph Nollekens to produce a series of marble portrait busts of his closest friends and influential Whig politicians to decorate the grand and fashionable interiors of his residence at Carlton House. The bust was delivered to Carlton House in June 1811.