Henry Bone was the son of a cabinet-make from Truro, Cornwall. Bone came to London c. 1779 and began to work as a miniature painter, at first painting in watercolour on ivory but working exclusively in enamel from c. 1803 onwards. After his appointment as Enamel Painter to George, Prince of Wales (later George IV) in 1801 he began to paint a series of large-scale enamel copies of mythological and religious paintings by Reynolds and the Old Masters which were elaborately framed and hung in the Prince of Wales's Private Bedroom at Carlton House. They survive as the most ambitious works of their type ever produced using the enamel technique.

Bone's enamel is after an oil portrait of the Prince of Wales by Thomas Phillips exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806 (no. 90) and showing the Prince of Wales wearing general officer's uniform with the ribbon and star of the Order of the Garter. The location of the original is unknown; it may be the painting recorded in the Prince of Wales's accounts in April 1806 and later destroyed in a fire at Carlton House. This enamel follows closely Henry Bone's squared drawing dated August 1814. The drawing, which is full-length and inscribed: original / by Phillips, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London (Bone, Drawings, II/86b).

A label on the reverse is signed, dated and inscribed in ink: His R.H. the Prince Regent / London / 1818 July / Painted by Henry Bone R.A. Enamel / painter in Ordinary to His Majesty / &. Enamel painter to the Prince Regent / after the Original by Thos: Philips R.A. / painted in 1808