George Siddons (1787-1848) was the second son and sixth child of the actress Sarah Siddons (née Kemble) (1755-1831) and her husband William Siddons (1744-1808). An obituary in The Gentleman's Magazine, December 1848 noted that he was: 'for many years a member of the Bengal Civil Service of the East India Company, and formerly Postmaster-General of Bengal.'

This lithograph by Richard James Lane (1800-1872) was one of five portraits that appeared on plate 2 of Imitations of the Chalk Drawings &c of Sir Thomas Lawrence, printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel (1789-1850) and published by Joseph Dickinson (1780-1849) in May 1830, most probably as a tribute to Lawrence who died on 7th January 1830. The portraits were of Mrs. Siddons as Sigismunda, centre, surrounded by three of her children, Cecilia, Sally, and George, and one of her brothers, Charles Kemble. A proof plate in the British Library includes the information: 'From drawings (made between 1787 and 1800) in the possession of Mrs Siddons and Mr. Charles Kemble'.

In 1787, to study at the Royal Academy Schools, the young portrait painter Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) moved to London from Bath, where he had met Sarah Siddons a decade earlier. Lawrence became a visitor to her house, where he would probably have sketched these portraits, and by the end of 1795 or early in 1796 was in a romantic relationship with her oldest daughter Sarah Martha, known as Sally (1775-1803). He soon transferred his affections to her younger sister Maria (1779-1798), to whom he was engaged, but broke off the engagement before Maria's death from tuberculosis in October 1798, and declared his love again for Sally, who also died from tuberculosis in 1803.