Having begun life as a mezzotint engraver, George Dawe was much employed as a painter by Prince Leopold both during his marriage (1816-7) and after; he worked also for the Duke and Duchess of Kent. Like Lawrence he was at Aix-la-Chapelle to paint the crowned heads assembled there for the Congress in 1818. He spent the years 1818-28 working for the Emperor Alexander I in St Petersburg, creating 336 portraits of those responsible for the defeat of Napoleon, housed in a specially-created gallery in the Winter Palace (the equivalent of the Waterloo Chamber). He died soon after his return to England in 1829. With some difficulty Dawe managed to arrange a few sittings between April and August 1818 before the Duke set off for continent. This portrait may be the only one Dawe executed at least partially from the life and the model for all his other images of the Duke. The Duke is shown wearing the uniform of a Field Marshall, with the ribbon of the Garter over the stars of the Garter and the Bath and the cross as Grand Commander of the Order of the Bath.