John and Sarah Scarvell’s second son John Redmond Barnes Scarvell, was born in 1830. Their first child, Edward Redmond, had died at sea in 1829 aged five months. They had ten children by 1855, when artist Richard Noble was commissioned to paint individual portraits of the family.

John Redmond lived at Windsor and died in the same year this portrait was painted. His brothers, Sydney, George and Edward Augustus, also sat for Noble in 1855, but their portraits are not part of the Library’s collection.