Morier was a Swiss military and sporting painter who started working for William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721-65) in 1747, when he painted a series of pictures of troops under his command. From 1752 until 1764 he was employed as ‘limner’ (painter) to the Duke on an annual salary of £100; his name also appears regularly in Royal accounts from 1764 to 1767.

There is a documentary-style economy to this painting of a Private of Horse, in the act of gesturing to someone outside the picture, though the painting as a whole is devoid of any other human presence: no figures are visible around the fortified (presumably Germanic) settlement behind him. The clouds create a central vignette around the figure, whose blue-faced uniform is rendered with the cool precision fitting to a painter working for Cumberland, who spent a large part of his life on the battlefield. .