This is a model for a monument to Lord Robert Manners, a naval captain who died in 1782 at age 24, in a battle against the French in the West Indies. The figure of Victory seen here was said to be modelled on the beautiful Duchess of Rutland, the sister-in-law of the deceased hero. This terracotta was a preliminary study ofr a monument intended for the garden of the Rutland country estate, which was in fact never executed.

Nollekens produced another monument dedicated to Lord Manners and two of his fellow captains, in Westminster Abbey; it was commissioned by the Duke of Rutland and is known as the Monument to the Three Captains.

Nollekens was a prolific sculptor of portrait busts and operated a thriving workshop in London. He spent eight years in Rome from 1762 to 1770, where he worked with Bartolomeo Cavaceppi restoring and copying antique marbles. One of these copies, his group of Castor and Pollux, is in the Museum's collection (Museum no. A.59-1940). He probably perfected his modelling of clay while he was in Rome and started to experiment in making small figures or groups. These occasionally became models for large-scale finished marbles, but many, still in his studio at his death, were simply studies in their own right, which he called pensieri (thoughts).