Notable for his victory at Saratoga and his defeat at Camden, the Conway Cabal at one point unsuccessfully tried to replace George Washington with Gates.

[2] Although he had retired from military service in 1784, Stuart depicts him in his blue and buff uniform of an American major general.

He wears the commemorative gold medal struck by Congress and holds a copy of the convention he signed with British commander John Burgoyne.

[4] After eighteen years away in Britain and Ireland, Stuart returned to America to escape his creditors.

[5] Reflecting Stuart's years in London it has been described "a distinctly British portrait, combining the painterly mastery of Gainsborough with the tight clarity of Romney".