The son of Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was made Canon of Canterbury in 1851, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford in 1856 and Dean of Westminster in 1864. Chaplain to the Prince Consort, Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, and a favourite of the Queen, he took part in the private service commemorating the death of the Prince Consort and witnessed the consecration of the Mausoleum. An ardent traveller, he accompanied the Prince of Wales on a tour of the East in 1862 and in 1874 performed the marriage service of the Duke of Edinburgh at St Petersburg. In 1863 he married Lady Augusta Bruce, a Woman of the Bedchamber. Broad-minded, just and charming, it was said of him by Archbishop Tait that 'No clergyman, perhaps, who ever lived exercised over the public at large, and especially over the literary and thoughtful portion of it, so fascinating an influence.'

On 11 April 1877 Herman Sahl wrote an amusing account for the Queen of his visit with Von Angeli to the Deanery at Westminster for the sitting for this portrait. Von Angeli took a measurement of the Dean's nose with a strip of paper. His praise – in German – of the Dean's fine features and magnificent head were fully understood by the sitter and threatened to disturb the necessary immobility of his features. The Queen described the finished portrait as 'marvellous'. Von Angeli was paid £150 for the painting and it was one of the pictures exhibited by Von Angeli in the Austrian section of the Paris exhibition in 1878. The frame is by Vokins.