The sitter was a Scottish theologian and third Principal (from 1898 to his death) of the Free Church College, Aberdeen. From 1900 it became the United Free Church College, then Christ's College in 1936, before being fully absorbed by the University of Aberdeen in 1986. Salmond died in April 1905 and the college agreed to commission this posthumous memorial portrait in January 1906; it was delivered in October. Hector, the painter, was Principal of the Aberdeen School of Design which became part of the Free Church college in 1905, a matter in which both men were involved and well-known to each other as fellow Aberdonians.