This portrait beautifully demonstrates the increasing skill of American-born painters by the mid-18th century. John Greenwood, an American portraitist and satirist, was best known for a painting titled, Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (1755), a drunken scene featuring prominent early American merchants and politicians.

Jonathan Mayhew (1720–1766) was a Congregational minister. His outspoken political and religious liberalism made him a controversial figure in colonial New England. He believed that resistance to tyranny was a Christian duty, and he was an ardent defender of civil liberties.