This portrait of Rufus King is part of a set of five miniatures painted in Philadelphia in 1792. Four are portrait studies for John Trumbull's proposed painting The Inauguration of the President; the fifth portrait represents Seneca chief Hauaugaikhon, a member of a delegation of American Indians invited to Philadelphia by George Washington. Following the inauguration, Washington addressed members of Congress, among them Senator King of New York, Representative Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, Senator John Langdon of New Hampshire, and Representative John Brown of Virginia. King and Trumbull began a lifelong friendship in Boston in 1778, when they both belonged to a group of recent Harvard graduates who met to discuss literature and politics. King served as a delegate to the Massachusetts general court (1783–85), was an outstanding speaker in Congress (1784–87), and a senator from New York (1789–96). In 1796, he was appointed minister to England, a post he held until 1803.