Mould thought that the painting was probably a preparatory sketch for Van Dyck's 1634 work "Magistrates of Brussels", which was destroyed in the Bombardment of Brussels in 1695. Its composition is known from a sketch, in the in Paris, which van Dyck prepared to show how he planned to lay out the piece. Another three sketches of magistrates' heads for the same work, with the same red background as MacLeod's painting, are known to exist: two in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and a third which was sold to an unknown buyer. A further work, in the Royal Collection, may also be from the same series. Mould pointed out that the pose of the MacLeod portrait matched that of the rightmost individual in the grisaille sketch.