When George III was asked by Lord Eglinton to sit for the most fashionable portrait painter of the day, Joshua Reynolds, he replied: ‘Mr Ramsay is my painter, my Lord.’ Reynolds tried to gain royal notice with two speculative ventures – this portrait of George III as Prince of Wales and an oil sketch for a depiction of his marriage to Queen Charlotte (OM 1012, 404353) – both of which remained on his hands. Reynolds was knighted by George III, made first president of the Royal Academy and Principal Painter to the King upon Ramsay’s death in 1784, but never asked to paint anything. That the Royal Collection has a fine group of Reynolds is entirely thanks to George IV, who commissioned portraits at the end of the artist’s life and acquired many examples of his earlier work. This is one of a group of highly personal works (OM 1008, 400699, OM 1011, 401034, OM 1029-31, 404695-6 and 405712) obtained by him at various times from Reynolds’s niece and heiress, Mary Palmer, Marchioness of Thomond (1750-1820).

The Prince of Wales did sit for this portrait in 1759 but the face is very dependent upon Liotard's pastel (OM 581, 400897), suggesting that the artist was not given adequate time to create a new physiognomy. It seems also here that Reynolds is adjusting his style to look as much as possible like Ramsay. 

The Prince is shown wearing a green coat between an armchair and a table on which rests his coronet; he also wears the riband of Garter and an ermine-lined mantle.