George Eden Jarvis (1840–1919) was the grandson of Colonel George Ralph Payne Jarvis, who inherited Doddington Hall from his friend, Sarah Hussey Delaval, Mrs Gunman. George Jarvis was born on 19 February 1840 and educated at Eton College. Jarvis, who married Alice Louisa, daughter of Henry Sherbrooke of Oxton Hall, Nottinghamshire, in 1863, succeeded his father, George Knollis Jarvis, as owner of the Doddington estate ten years later. In 1899 he commissioned William Goldring (1854–1919), landscape gardener at Kew, to design the west garden.

Robert Antoine Müller (c.1821–1883) was a German-born artist who specialised in portraiture and historical genre painting. His other portraits include Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (1877; National Trust, Hughenden Manor) and Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Myddelton Biddulph (1878; National Trust, Chirk Castle). His genre paintings include the Visit of the Doge of Venice to Titian (1870–1; Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens).