This medallion portrait of William III was almost certainly made when the itinerant ivory carver Jean Cavalier was in London, soon after William had come to the throne. In form it resembles a medal. Jean Cavalier (1650/60-1698/9), a Hugenot, was a native of France, and perhaps a Protestant. He travelled extensively, working as a wax modeller and ivory sculptor, and specialising in portrait medallions. In the 1682/3 he went to London, where he stayed until 1686; he then went to Trier, perhaps Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hannover, Kassel, and in 1689 to Vienna, Munich and perhaps Dresden. By 1690 he was back in London, where he carved pictures of the King and Queen and was given the passport as the 'King's medallist'. He was then at the Danish Court in 1691/3, and from 1694/5-7 in Stockholm, from whence he and his brother Denis, also a sculptor, journeyed as ambassadors on behalf of Sweden to Russia and Persia, where they both died. Cavalier was the most accomplished ivory-carver working in late Stuart England until the arrival of David Le Marchand around 1700. A closely comparable ivory portrait of William III is in a private collection in Dieppe (2017).