A fine, rare and large scale 17th century portrait of a lady by John Hayls. The as yet unknown noble sitter perches upon a bank within an extensive landscape, and a river flows nearby. She is expensively dressed in the high status and fashionable brightly coloured silk clothing of the period, with left hand clutching her busom and her right hand outstretched.John Hayls (pronounced Hales) ranks as one of the most talented portrait painters in mid-seventeenth century Britain. In spite of this fact, it is surprising perhaps that so few details of his life have survived. Most notably, his portrait of the diarist Samuel Pepys (now in the National Portrait Gallery) has remained the most enduring image of this infamous and iconic figure from the Restoration period.Like so many during this period, Hayls’s portraits draw heavily on of the works of the prolific Sir Anthony Van Dyck, whose death in 1641 provided large shoes for a new generation of painters to step into. This portrait of...