Lawrence had established himself as a leading portrait painter and depicted many politicians and royal figures of Liverpool's generation.

Liverpool's determined, combative stance may be an attempt to echo the Ancient Greek statesman.

Liverpool's biographer Norman Gash describes it as showing "a sensitive and intense young man with long hair, worn naturally in a kind of studied disorder, and a curiously intent look beneath the dark level eyebrows".

[1] An engraving of the portrait was made in 1801 around the time that he was negotiating the Treaty of Amiens with France.

Lawrence painted him several more times including in 1820 and then in 1826 towards the end of his lengthy period as premier.