This charming portrait depicting a young girl in a blue satin dress and standing in an interior was painted during the second quarter of the 17th century. It is redolent of the female artist Joan Carlile, one of the earliest British female artists to work professionally in oil. Carlile specialised in female portraiture; the full-length format and the delicately handled face is typical of her work. The roses are an emblem of the girl’s youth, innocence and femininity.Joan Carlile is sadly unfamiliar today, though she was much admired in her lifetime and for many years after her death. In a text on the art of painting by the royalist historian William Sanderson (published in 1658), he records only four female artists working in oil. Of those, nothing is known of ‘Mrs Weimes’ and only one work by Sarah Broman can be identified. The other two artists were Joan Carlile and Mary Beale (1633–1699). Carlile appears first in the list, suggesting that at that time she was regarded as the ...