Frederick North was the only son of Francis, 1st Earl of Guilford and Lucy Montagu, daughter of the Earl of Halifax. He was also stepbrother and lifelong friend of William, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, with whom he made the Grand Tour from 1752 to 1754. They arrived in Rome after August that year where, like Dartmouth, North was portrayed by Batoni (1752, completed 1756, National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 6180). Both young men also sat to Thomas Jenkins, the close friend of Wilson, but there is no recorded direct connection between North and the artist himself. After a long, distinguished parliamentary career and his ill-fated premiership (1770-82), during which Britain lost the American colonies, Lord North succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Guilford in 1790.
See further, A. M. Clark, ed. E. P. Bowron, Pompeo Batoni: A Complete Catalogue of his Works [...], 1985, no. 192, pl. 178; J. Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, 2004, p. 219
