Frederick William Dickens (1820-68) was John Dickens's second son. He is said to have had the same wearied expression as his sister Letitia, 'the raised eyebrows, small nose and large full lipped mouth'. Dickens obtained for him a clerkship in the Treasury but later he fell into his father's habit of contracting debt and looking to Charles Dickens for help, and this eventually led to them breaking off relations. Given Frederick's dates (1820-68) and his apparent age in this miniature, it was likely painted at a later date, probably not much earlier than 1840 when he would have been 20.

The artist, Janet Barrow (born Ross, 1795-1861) was a miniature painter in nineteenth-century Britain. She won the silver medal at the Society of Arts in 1816 and registered to study at the Townley Gallery the following year alongside her brother and sister. Between 1817 and 1828, she exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists. Barrow married in 1828 and became an aunt to Charles and Frederick Dickens. Her portrait of Charles, aged 18 in 1830, is held by the Dickens Museum. It is possible that Dickens’ character ‘Miss La Creevy’, the miniature painter in Nicholas Nickleby, was a nod to Janet Barrow. Dickens' character sheds light on a growing body of women artists in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain who turned to miniature painting as a pathway to artistic acclaim and financial stability.