William Etty (1787-1849) studied with Sir Thomas Lawrence for a year in 1808, before becoming a highly successful painter of erotic mythologies. In 1825 George IV promised Lawrence 400 guineas for a copy of Reynolds’s famous portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, with her daughter, the original exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1786 and still at Chatsworth. Lawrence passed the royal commission over to his former pupil, who produced this magnificent copy. 

The Duchess sits at three-quarters length, facing half to the right, wearing a black dress with a white fishu, her right arm raised, her left about the waist of her daughter who balances on her mother's left knee, both hands raised; red drapery on the left and above the sitters.

George Morant was paid £25 10s by George IV for a 'richly ornamented' frame for this painting on 13 December 1828.