This medallion painting was a commissioned design for one in series of mosaics. The mosaics formed a frieze of portrait heads of the Lords President of the Council (a British cabinet position), and their immediate predecessors, the Presidents of the Board of Trade, and were used in the decoration of the South Kensington Museum, later the V&A. All the portraits, with the exception of the Marquis of Salisbury were painted by F.B.Barwell.
Charles Edward Poulett-Thomson (later Lord Sydenham) was President of the Board of Trade in 1834.
