The eighteen-year old came from the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean, where his father the Marqis de Vaudreuil served as governor.

[3] Vaudreuil served in the French Army during the Seven Years' War and the year of the painting took part in the Battle of Rossbach.

He was later a prominent courtier under Louis XVI in the years before the French Revolution.

Today the painting is in the collection of the National Gallery in London, having been acquired in 1927.

[4] In 1784 Vaudreuil was painted by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, a work in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.