Lord Ribblesdale presented the portrait to the National Gallery in 1916, in memory of his first wife Charlotte (née Tennant), and their two sons, Captain Thomas Lister and Lieutenant Charles Lister. Charlotte had died in 1911, Thomas was killed in action in the 1903–04 Somaliland campaign, and Charles died of wounds in 1916 at the Battle of Gallipoli in the First World War. Ribblesdale later remarried, but with no male heir, the barony became extinct on his death in 1925.