In this portrait, painted long after his death in 1509, King Henry VII is depicted wearing the collar of the Order of the Garter and holding a red rose in his left hand, the emblem of the House of Tudor. This composition probably derives from portraits of the king made during his reign, and there are many variants still extant today, at Helmingham Hall in Suffolk, Christ Church in Oxford, the Society of Antiquaries in London and the Musée Calvet in Avignon.

It is likely that this painting entered the Royal Collection in the 1720s, when Caroline of Ansbach, later Queen consort of King George II, acquired fifteen panel portraits of English monarchs in order to bolster the limited Hanoverian collection of such works. Queen Caroline may have been particularly pleased to acquire a portrait of King Henry VII, seeing a parallel between the Wars of the Roses in which he was successful and the ongoing dynastic struggle between the houses of Hanover and Stuart.