In 1764 Edward, Duke of York went on a Grand Tour to Italy; he either sat to Nathaniel Dance in Rome at that time or made his acquaintance there and sat for him on his and the artist's return (both were home by 1765). Italian portraiture at this date was dominated by Pompeo Batoni (1708-87), for whom the Duke of York also sat (see RCIN 400212, 400503 and 405034), and his English-speaking followers. One such was Dance, who was so closely allied to Batoni that they even shared a business-card. This image of the Duke of York in Garter Robes with all the props of Grand Style portraiture is wholly Batonian in character. Benjamin West later said that when he arrived in Rome in 1760 ' the Italian artists of that day thought of nothing, looked at nothing, but the works of Pomeio Batoni'; he might have added they he himself succumbed to the influence.

If there was a divide at this date between the precise, crisp and somewhat metalic forms of Batoni, Dance and West on the one hand and the soft painterly imprecision of Reynolds on the other, then George III chose the former with wholehearted enthusiasm. It may be that the Duke of Kent's Grand Tour helped to steer him in this direction.