The Ellisons were a prominent Lincoln family, whose experiences reflect the challenges faced in the quickly changing social and economic world of the seventeenth century. Richard's father, also Richard, had paved the way his family's to prosperity by leasing parts of the canal system that gave access to central England and the North Sea, profiting from the transport of hay, grain, wool and timber. His son, the sitter in the present portrait, continued to run and maintain the navigation channel but also branched out into banking. In 1775, in partnership with Abel Smith of Nottingham, and John Brown, a Lincoln alderman, he established the first bank in Lincoln. This bank, after two mergers, became the National Provincial Bank in 1918, and is now the National Westminster Bank, known by its common name NatWest.
Richard's wife, Esther, was the grand-daughter of wealthy ship owner, Captain John Walker of Whitby, to whom the explorer Captain James Cook was apprenticed in 1746. The couple had six children: Richard (b.1754), Henry (b.1761), John; Anne; Susanna and Harriet. Together they purchased the estate of Sudbrooke Holme in 1759; it is likely to adorn the walls of their new home that the present portraits were commissioned from the youthful Wright.