This sophisticated portrait depicts John Campbell, Viscount Glenorchy, second and only surviving son of John Campbell, 3rd Earl of Breadalbane and Holland (1696-1782), resplendent in a green coat edged in gold lace, a style inspired by sporting outfits of the day. Sadly, he narrowly predeceased his father and both the title and the portrait were inherited by his third cousin. Surprisingly, having always been a sickly gentleman, it is traditionally said that he died not of ill health but a duel.

The inscription on the portrait suggests that it was executed in 1762, a dating that is supported by entries in the popular Boddley's Bath Journal, that place Glenorchy in Bath in April and September of that year, when he could have sat to Gainsborough. Unusually, the pendant to the present portrait, depicting the sitter's wife Willielma, daughter and co-heir of William Maxwell and a patroness of evangelical missionary work in Scotland, was not executed by Gainsborough (though he did paint a bust-length portrait of her in circa 1765), but by Katherine Read.