George Harry Grey, 5th Earl of Stamford (1737-1819)

George Harry Grey, 5th Earl of Stamford (1737–1819), was an English peer who, like many of his generation and class, made a Grand Tour of Italy as part of his cultural formation. Mengs's portrait of 1760, held by the National Trust, represents one of many commissions the painter received from British visitors to Rome during the years when his celebrity was at its height. Stamford was a significant Whig landowner whose later career in English politics was less distinguished than his Grand Tour cultivation might have suggested. The National Trust's preservation of this portrait maintains it within the aristocratic country house context for which it was originally made — a rare case of a Grand Tour commission surviving in institutional care connected to the commissioning family's tradition.

The 1760 date places this portrait in the period of Mengs's greatest Roman fame, when his technical resources were fully developed and his clientele was at its most socially distinguished. The portrait exemplifies his standard format for British grand tourists: careful individual likeness, smooth surfaces, restrained palette, unobtrusive background.