This circular blue enamel and gold box, edged with beads of bright-cut steel, is set with a portrait of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland inside the lid, and with a portrait of Anne, Duchess of Cumberland, both by the miniaturist Samuel Shelley.

Samuel Shelley (1756-1808) was born in Whitechapel, London, and entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1774. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1774 to 1804 and his work included oil paintings and watercolours as well as miniatures.

The miniature of the Duke depicts him wearing the ribbon and star of the Order of the Garter. Henry Frederick (1745-90) was George III’s younger brother, the sixth child and fourth son of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (1707–51), and his wife, Augusta (1719–72). In July 1766, George III appointed Henry as ranger of Windsor Forest and Great Park and two years later he entered the navy as a midshipman. He was promoted to rear-admiral in 1769 and vice-admiral in 1770. In 1771, his marriage to Anne Horton, a commoner and married before, horrified George III, and he was for a short while barred from the king's presence.

The Duchess's costume and hairstyle in the miniature by Shelley date to the early 1780s. Horace Walpole, art historian and writer, described the duchess in 1771 as ‘extremely pretty, not handsome, very well made, with the most amorous eyes in the world and eyelashes a yard long’. She was also ‘Coquette beyond measure, artful as Cleopatra, and completely mistress of all her passions and projects’. Anne Horton (1743-1808) was the daughter of Simon Luttrell, baron Irnham (1713–87), and Judith Maria Lawes (d. 1798). Her family were seen by contemporaries as political opportunists and the marriage prompted George III to force the Royal Marriages Act through parliament, stipulating that descendants of George II could not marry without the sovereign's consent. The Cumberlands established a rival court at Cumberland House in Pall Mall and were noted for their conspicuous consumption in entertainments, music and art. When the duke died, the duchess augmented her annual allowance of £4,000 by raising additional funds from auctioning the duke's music library – including manuscripts by Handel and Haydn – musical instruments and books, in February 1791. In 1800, she moved to the continent and died at Gorizia, near Trieste, Italy, in 1808.

Miniature of the Duke of Cumberland signed on the backing card in ink: S. Shelley,