The style of this lady�s sugar pink silk dress with its wide shoulders, pleated bodice dipping to a point and demi-gigot sleeves that are full above the elbow but narrow to the wrist date this portrait to the early to mid-1830s. Her plaited and looped hair is topped with a frothy cap trimmed with lace and ribbon. The sitter is seated in a well-furnished interior with a classical urn on a pedestal adding depth to the background.*By family descent, the sitter is said to be Maria Athill. Born in Antigua in 1781, Maria was the daughter and sole heiress of Samuel Byam Athill, an author of medical texts, and his wife Mary Lynch whose family owned sugar plantations in Antigua. In 1804, Maria married Charles Turner, a West India merchant based in London and Liverpool. The couple settled in Liverpool and had a large family of ten children.*The portrait is painted in watercolour on a marble base and so can be firmly attributed to the artist Thomas Heathfield Carrick, an artist wo...