This print is a direct response to William Hogarth’s well-known 1763 satirical portrait of British political radical John Wilkes. Hogarth’s image, depicted on the easel, portrays Wilkes with horn-like protuberances on his wig, a cross-eyed squint, and a lascivious grin. Wilkes’s open-legged posture and the position of his hand on the staff that holds aloft the liberty cap add to the innuendo. Altogether, Hogarth depicts his subject as lewd, evil, and idiotic. This print presents Hogarth as the child-fool-puppet of the king (or his prime minister), who stands behind the artist’s chair as he employs his artistic skills against the government’s enemies.

Though not visible in the print, Hogarth’s portrait included at Wilkes’s elbow numbers 17 and 45 of The North Briton, his radical political newspaper. Number 17 included an attack on Hogarth’s support of the British government’s policies associated with the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). The more famous number 45 criticized the king and the British government for the peace settlement with France at the war’s end. This led to Wilkes’s arrest on a warrant of dubious legality and his subsequent struggle in the courts against unconstitutional authority, winning for him the enthusiastic support of many American colonists as prerevolutionary tensions with Britain grew.