A richly coloured and highly decorative early 18th century portrait of a young girl carrying a basket of flowers which presents a charming vision of childhood in the first years of eighteenth-century England. The elegant sitter is depicted full length within a hallway standing between a stone pillar and a billowing curtain upon a chequerboard floor. She is dressed in the highly fashionable brightly coloured silk clothing of the period, namely a blue dress and silver silk wrap over a white chemise. From underneath the hem of her dress a striped yellow silk shoe can just be glimpsed. The drapery of her costume introduces a welcome element of dynamic movement to this work.With her long neck and insouciantly cropped hair she looks directly out at the viewer and engages us with a wide eyed and sympathetic gaze. Within this highly decorative portrait there is a subtext as our sitters flower basket symbolises her youth, beauty and future fertility at a time when the main purpose...