Lawrence was the most fashionable and also the greatest portraitist of his generation. He was made Principal Painter to George III in 1792 after Reynolds’s death, and received occasional commissions; however it was only after 1814 that George IV began to employ him in earnest. This portrait was commissioned by George IV at a cost of 150 guineas and painted between 1818 and 1819 at Aix-la-Chapelle but was incomplete and in the artist’s possession at his death in 1830. The sitter wears a fur-lined coat and has two orders round his neck - the Red Eagle of Prussia and maybe the Iron Cross of Prussia; he also wears the order and ribbon of St. Stephen of Austria. This is a painting that would seem ideal for the Waterloo Chamber, depicting as it does a key diplomat in the congresses that followed Napoleon’s defeat. However it seems never to have been part of that scheme perhaps because of its modest head-and-shoulder format.