Castell Coch was reconstructed during the 1870s by John Patrick Crichton-Stuart (1847–1900), 3rd Marquess of Bute, and his architect, William Burges (1827–1881). The 3rd Marquess was intensely proud of his ancestry and the portraits tell the story of the ownership of the Bute Glamorgan Estate, beginning with William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke (d.1570), and on to the 3rd Marquess of Bute and his wife, Gwendolen (1854–1932). The 2nd Marquess opened the first Bute Dock in Cardiff in 1839 and the rapid growth of the port led Cardiff to become the largest coal exporter in the world.

Each portrait by the Victorian artist Edward Travanyon Haynes is a copy of an earlier original. Several are based on paintings by some of the finest British eighteenth-century portraitists, including Allan Ramsay and Henry Raeburn. The significance of the portraits lies in relation to the decorative scheme for Castell Coch, an architectural gem of the Victorian revival of Gothic architecture.