Portrait of a lady, aged 21, three-quarter-length, in a black and white dress embellished with gold chains and jewels, and a ruff, holding a book in her left hand and a fan in her right hand

Belton House, where this painting once hung according to a label on the frame reverse, was the seat of the Brownlow and Cust family for three hundred years. The present mansion, which was built by Sir John Brownlow and his wife between 1685 and 1688, is celebrated as a compilation of all the finest elements of Carolean architecture, the only truly vernacular style of architecture that England had produced since the Tudor period. Following the Great War, when the Machine Gun Corps was based in the park, the Brownlows gifted the house, complete with most of its contents, to the National Trust.