This miniature of King George I is based on the official state portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller (RCIN 405677). He is wearing the collar of the Order of the Garter and a lace steinkirk cravat which was designed to be worn loosely or negligently. The fashion is said to have begun after troops at the battle of Steenkerque in 1692 had no time to tie their cravats properly before going into action.

George, Elector of Hanover, was proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland in 1714 under the Act of Settlement which sought to secure a Protestant succession. There were at least 50 Roman Catholic relatives with stronger claims. He was challenged by the Jacobites, supporters of the Roman Catholic son of James II, James Stuart, who landed in Scotland in 1715, but the rebellion was suppressed by the end of the year. In parliament, some Tories were sympathetic to the Jacobites so George turned to the Whig party to form a government and they dominated politics. Opposition to the King gathered round his eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, and led to differences and intense dislike between father and son. In 1719 and 1720, and during most of the King's absences in Hanover, power was delegated to a Regency Council and not to the Prince of Wales. George married Sophia Dorothea of Brunswick-Celle in 1682; he subsequently divorced her for infidelity and in 1694 imprisoned her in the castle of Ahlden until her death in 1726. George I died on 11 June 1727 during a visit to Hanover.

The miniature was probably painted by a follower of Christian Frederick Zincke towards the end of the eighteenth century. It does not display the finesse characteristic of the technique of Zincke who was already well established at the Stuart court by the time of George I's accession in 1714.