The Italian portrait painter Mancini was a fellow pupil with Sargent in Paris under the academic portraitist Carolus-Duran. Sargent and Mancini remained friends, and Sargent did his best to encourage his popularity in London. Mancini lived in London at the beginning of the century, and sold portraits to a number of Sargent's patrons. This portrait of his father was included in a huge exhibition of modern Italian painting held at Earl's Court in 1904. It was shown again in the New English Art Club the following year. Sargent himself owned another version of it. Mancini's technique developed in an extraordinary way, and in later pictures he incorporated a network of gauze into the material of his paint.