It depicts the English landowner Sir Brooke Boothby, 6th Baronet.

[1][2] It is unusual in portraiture of the era in being set outdoors and with Boothby shown laying vertically.

He is depicted in a wooded glade and holding a book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Swiss writer he was a huge admirer of.

[3] It was displayed at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition of 1781 at Somerset House.

Today the painting is in the collection of the Tate Britain in Pimlico having been acquired in 1925.