Ramsay was brought to the attention of the royal family by one of his most important patrons, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who in 1758 commissioned a portrait of George III when Prince of Wales, a version of which is in the Royal Collection (409153). Through an error John Shackleton (who died in 1767) was reappointed to the post of Principal Painter in Ordinary to George III on his accession in 1760. Ramsay, however, was given the title ‘one of His Majesty’s Principal Painters in Ordinary’ and assumed the duties of the King’s painter. The strength of Ramsay’s position in the King’s household is illustrated by George III’s refusal of Lord Eglinton’s request that he sit to Ramsay’s younger rival, Reynolds, with the words: ‘Mr Ramsay is my painter, my Lord.’ Lord Bute also introduced Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) to the King, but whereas Zoffany was at the outset of his career, Allan Ramsay was already fifty when he found himself superintending the productions of innumerable copies of his state portraits of the King and Queen (OM 996-7, 405307-8). This means that beyond these there are disappointingly few original portrait compositions by him in the collection – a group of Queen Charlotte and her two eldest children (OM 998, 404922) and three individual portraits of standard three-quarter-length format (50 x 40 inches) of members of her family (OM 999-1001, 404924, 406963 and 403553). These three were painted in 1767-9 and are probably the 'other portraits' for which Ramsay was paid £152 15s in February 1769.

This portrait of Queen Charlotte's younger brother must have been painted during the sitter's visit to London between November 1768 and August 1769. It shows him standing in woodland, resting the tricorne hat in his right hand on a rocky ledge; he wears the uniform of an officer of the 4th Regiment of Austrian-Salzburg-Dragoons. Like so many of Ramsay's portraits in the Royal Collection the head was painted on a smaller piece of canvas and stitched into the larger one we now see.