Hoppner was the son of a German physician working at the court of George II; he was encouraged to become a painter by George III, studying drawings in the Royal Collection as well as attending the RA Schools. In 1793, after the death of Reynolds, Hoppner was appointed Principal Portrait Painter to the Prince of Wales.

After a career as court musician to the Esterhazy, Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was pensioned off in 1790 when Prince Nicolas was succeeded by his son, Anton. Haydn used the opportunity to make two highly successful (and lucrative) visits to London at the invitation of the impresario, Johann Peter Salomon (1745-1815). During his first visit in 1791-2 the Prince of Wales commissioned this portrait, which the composer mentions in a letter of 24 November 1791. When Haydn left England on 23 July 1792 this picture was not finished but, according to a writer in the 'Quarterly Review' ‘it was so striking a likeness of this extraordinary man, that the Prince of Wales, for whom it was painted, would not permit Hoppner to touch it after his departure’. There may be some truth in the story of the Prince’s intervention: Hoppner could obviously have finished it without further sittings and yet the unfinished effect is powerful and evocative of the creative process, as if the composer holding his quill in some way mirrors the painter holding his brush. The work was delivered after the artist's death by his widow in 1810.