The donor of this painting, Maria Christiana Cartwright (1805–1887), was a close friend of the John Thompson, porcelain dealer and optician of Nottingham, who bequeathed a selection of porcelain to the Midland Counties Art Museum in 1873 (later accessioned into the Castle Museum collection as NCM 1878-1 to 57). Cartwright lived in Wolverhampton, but the artist was a Nottingham man. Other than these circumstantial connections, there is no proof that the sitter in this portrait and the porcelain donor are the same person, but it is tempting to think it is the same man. There is also a difficulty with the dating: the NCM Register dates the painting to 1875, yet Thompson died in 1873.