[1] [2] [3] It depicts William Beckford, noted as a novelist during the Georgian era.

Having inherited vast-owning wealth from his Jamaican slave-owning father William Beckford, the younger William pursued his interests in the arts.

Reynolds was a celebrated portraitist, a founder member of the Royal Academy of Arts and its First President.

Today the painting is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London, having been acquired in 1980.

[4] This article about an eighteenth-century painting is a stub.