The couple are depicted life-size in matching black and pink van Dyck costume, and are holding theatrical masks in a curtained architectural setting, beside a massive vase. The picture was presumably begun as a marriage portrait, although it is unlikely to have been completed prior to Lady Henrietta's death on 24 July 1769. Williams-Wynn sat for Reynolds in February 1769, his fiancé in March, and Sir Watkin once again in August. The black costume of the figures suggest that it was completed as a memorial portrait after Henrietta Williams-Wynn's death. Lady Henrietta is posed in an attitude common in Reynolds' portraits of women, which derives ultimately from the studio practice of his master Thomas Hudson. Sir Watkin's attitude combines two classical prototypes: a melancholy figure from a sarcophagus of the Muses, engraved in 1747 and now in the Louvre, and the Farnese Hercules, in Rome until 1787, and now in Naples.