John Richmond Webb served under the Duke of Marlborough and was one of his most successful generals. He was said, before he was wounded at Malplaquet, to be 'as Paris is handsome and as Hector brave'. In 1690 he married Henrietta, daughter of Sir John Borlase, and they had seven children. He fell out with Marlborough in 1708 because he thought Marlborough did not give him credit for a hard-won victory at Wijnendale. In 1709 Queen Anne granted him a pension of £1,000 a year for 99 years. In 1713 he became Member of Parliament for Ludgershall in Wiltshire and Newport, Isle of Wight. As MP, in 1718 he objected to documents being presented to parliament in Latin, a move that is sometimes considered the basis for the current practice of providing parliament with documents only written in English. He declared that: 'he was not ashamed of his ignorance; that he was never brought up in a University but in the Army ever since he was 16 and had never looked in a grammar since and that he did not understand one word that was read and therefore insisted that they should be turned into English and not be forced to vote for what they did not know'. In 1720 he married Anne Skeates, the sister of his first wife who had died in 1711, and they had three more children before he died in 1724.

The artist, Christian Richter (1678-1732), was born in Stockholm and settled in London in 1702 where his compatriots, Hans Hysing and Michael Dahl, had thriving British practices. Many of Richter's miniatures are copies from full-scale portraits by leading artists. Richter began his career as a silversmith then moved to miniature painting, first on vellum and later on enamel. George Vertue, the engraver and antiquary, described Richter's style: 'his Manner of Painting very tender and Curious, his tincts had a great variety his pencil regular and neat, his lines of drawing very just & toucht with freedom'.

The miniature is laid on a card engraved with the announcement of a charity sermon.