Nathaniel Hone (1718-1784) was born in Dublin but in 1751 settled in London, where he became a portrait painter. He was a member of the Royal Academy, but his antagonism towards its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, led to a scandal when in 1775 he sent to the Academy a picture entitled “The Conjurer” that was clearly an attack on Reynolds, and contained what was thought to be an indecent caricature of the artist Angelica Kauffman. In 1781 he painted a portrait of Elizabeth Montagu that has since been lost.