Amateur artist J. M. Carter had a career in the army and rose to the position of Captain of the Royal Regiment. However, he also exhibited oil paintings at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and the Society of British Artists. When he exhibited at the Academy in 1842, he was probably serving overseas, because his work was sent ‘c/o Mr. F. Grant’ (Francis Grant, later President of the Royal Academy). Carter and Grant may have been friends; Carter had exhibited a view of Grant’s home in Regent’s-park’ (presumably a drawing) at the Academy in 1839. Carter was in Gibraltar by 1844 and two years later published his ‘Select Views of the Rock and Fortress of Gibraltar’, including 14 plates. By 1847, he was living in Monmouth, in Wales.