Vanderbank studied in Sir Godfrey Kneller's academy from 1711, where he worked until 1720. With Louis Chéron, he then set up his own academy in St. Martin's Lane. He was a successful portrait painter, but his extravagant lifestyle led him into debt and in 1729 he entered "the liberties of the Fleet" - mansion houses near Fleet prison, London, in which certain privileged prisoners could serve out their sentences in return for payment. In 1738, the year that this picture was painted, the engraver and antiquary George Vertue - also a student in Kneller's academy - wrote in one of his notebooks on fellow British artists that 'Mr John Vanderbank has of late or some years had a gret run of Busines - painting persons of Quality and distinction ...'.
