Portrait of a young girl

Thomas Frank Heaphy (1813-1873) was the eldest son of the watercolourist Frank Heaphy (1775-1835) and assumed the additional name Thomas to distinguish his work from his father's. Heaphy began his career as a portrait painter in watercolour and built up an extensive patronage before branching out into subject pictures in oils. His first subject picture, The Infant Pan Educated by the Wood Nymphs, was exhibited in 1850 at the Royal Academy, where he exhibited regularly. However he mostly exhibited at Sussex Street where numerous historical genre subjects are recorded. Heaphy spent many years in an investigation into the traditional likeness of Christ and published his research in a series of eight articles in the Art Journal in 1861. His associated drawings and oils for this work are in the British Museum.