Lawrence was the most fashionable and also the greatest portraitist of his generation. He was made Principal Painter to George III in 1792 after Reynolds’s death, and received occasional commissions; however it was only after 1814 that George IV began to employ him in earnest. This portrait was commissioned by George IV in 1825 at a cost of 300 guineas but Lawrence seems to have been characteristically slow at producing it. An inscription on the back of the canvas describes the work as ‘one of the last works of Sir Thomas Lawrence’ and dates it to 1829, stating that it was placed at Windsor Castle by William IV in 1835. Jeffrey Wyatville was commissioned in 1824 by George IV to transform Windsor Castle discovering or re-creating its Medieval, Gothic character. The sitter is shown in this portrait working on his plans for Windsor Castle, including the Round Tower and Augusta Gate, with inscriptions giving the dates of the work and the name of the Royal patron. Lawrence has based his portrait of Reynolds’s type of the vigorous and ‘manly’ intellectual, seen most clearly in his 1771 portrait of Sir Joseph Banks (National Portrait Gallery).