Trained in the law, Richard Assheton Cross was called to the Bar in 1849; he entered Parliament as a Conservative MP in 1857. Appointed Home Secretary in 1872 by Disraeli, Cross was extremely successful in this role, playing a large part in the social reforms of the time. The Cross Act of 1875 empowered municipalities to buy and demolish slums and to build housing for rental. In the same year Cross carried through the Factory Act, regulating the employment of women and children in textile mills, the Public Health Act, a comprehensive sanitary code, and two statutes reinterpreting Gladstone's trade-union legislation of 1871 in a sense more favourable to the unions.
This painting originally belonged to the statesman and bookseller W. H. Smith who formed a collection of portraits of his political colleagues.