Attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger

(Bruges 1561-1635 London)

Portrait of a girl, half-length, in an embroidered dress with yellow lace, holding a cat, within a painted oval

Footnotes

Provenance
Possibly, the Nightingale family, Yorkshire and Derbyshire, early 19th Century and thence by descent to the present owners

In its treatment, the present portrait displays the attributes that made Gheeraerts the premier painter in the late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean court: beautiful drawing, soft modelling and a skilful manipulation of paint to mimic the texture and properties of various surfaces and materials. It was not unusual for Gheeraerts to depict his portraits in a similar brown feigned oval, such as his portrait of Catherine Killigrew, in the Yale center for British Art, and his celebrated portrait of Queen Anne of Denmark's jester, Tom Derry, which is in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

It was only during the period between circa 1615 and 1620 that it was fashionable to dye lace yellow, as seen in the present portrait and, for example in the Portrait of Thomas Pope by William Larkin that was sold in these rooms on 5 July 2017, lot 45 (fig.1). The sitter is wearing a necklace of what may be coral beads, which were worn by children to protect them from misfortune. Gheeraerts had lost but two of his six known children and was known for the 'sweet melancholy' of his paintings: there is a charming portrait of a boy aged two by Gheeraerts at Compton Verney. While the cat could indicate a variety of attributes, in this instance it was most likely intended to symbolise calm domesticity and comfort.