Portrait of Sir John Shaw, 2nd Bt., with his second wife, Sarah, Lady Shaw, and their children

Sir John Shaw, 2nd Bt., married second Sarah (d.1724/25), daughter and co-heir of William Paggen, and by her had three sons and six daughters: William, of Cheshunt House, Hertfordshire, who married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of John Blandy of Inglewood, Berkshire; Paggen, a merchant at Smyrna; Peter, a merchant at Aleppo; Judith, who married Richard Arnold, deputy secretary at war; Catherine, who married first the Rev. Thomas Davies Bovey of Stow Hall, Cambridgeshire, and second John Spencer, pay-master to the East India Company; Mary; Rebecca, who married George Coldham, surgeon extraordinary to the Prince of Wales; Jane; and Anne, who married Samuel Tomkins, merchant.

This picture was bought back by a direct Shaw descendant, having passed into the Mayo family of Cheshunt, a house and estate which Sir John Shaw, 2nd Bt., bought in 1694. This estate passed to the eldest son of his second marriage (William), while Eltham passed to the eldest son of his first marriage (John, 3rd Bt.). The estate of Cheshunt, and this picture, appear to have then passed through two female generations: William's sister Rebecca, and her daughter Mary, who married a Mayo.

In the 1906 sale, the picture was sold as being by 'Schoefer', presumably the little known artist generally spelt 'Scheffer', whose dated works were executed between 1707 and 1711. Described by Waterhouse as being 'in the style of Dahl', the attribution seems wholly plausible.