Bockman was a portrait painter and copyist who had arrived in England by 1711. This is one of nine copies of some of the 15 portraits of Admirals, painted in 1701-12 for Queen Anne by Kneller and Dahl. In 1824 George IV donated the originals to Greenwich Hospital; they are now in the National Maritime Museum. These copies were probably executed in 1711-4, immediately after the originals, when the fame of the sitters was still fresh and Queen Anne still on the throne. The others in the set are first recorded in the Royal Collection in 1818, which suggests that they were not originally a royal commission. They may have been acquired by George IV (sometime before 1818) as a prelude to giving away the originals.