The simple setting, being a featureless background and a knotted oak floor, allows the radiance of her elaborately detailed, and vibrantly coloured costume to be admired unchallenged. The child’s dress, designed with distinctive alternating horizontal bands of amber-gold and black stripes, features a lace-trimmed gauze apron, and her simple falling lace-edged ruff is consistent with the dating of the painting of 1626, as inscribed in the upper right corner of the painting’s composition. The pureness of the lace’s white, whether on her elaborate headdress or her cuffs, is subtly interrupted by flashes of red, which permeates through the transparent material.

In her right hand, the little girl tenderly holds a small bunch of gillyflowers (carnations): the most prominent stem has fully blossomed, whilst another remains a bud. This could symbolise that whilst she is evidently a beautiful child of great means, her life will blossom as she matures. Carnations also change in colour as they grow and, as the girl is holding two stems at different stages of their growth, might allude to the fact that as the child grows older she will also change in appearance and character.

Our portrait appears to be the earliest in the set of portraits depicting children from the Shafto family [Figs. 1 & 2]. The Shafto’s were a prominent family in the north-east of England, primarily based around Northumberland. The patriarch of the family, Thomas Folliott, assumed the name of Shafto in 1282, having derived it from his residence of Shafto Crag in Northumberland. The subsequent family seat, Bavington Hall, entered the family in the 15th century when William Shafto married the heiress of Little Bavington, Margaret Riddell. The medieval house was replaced in the late 17th century when the main house, as we know it today, was built.

William Shafto (c.1576 – 1666), who was likely a very close relative of the present subject, was the first of many in the family to serve as High Sheriff of Northumberland, one of the most prestigious and respected positions in English society. A couple of generations later, however, the high-standing reputation of the family was shaken William Shafto (c.1663 – 1719) and his son John were attainted for their part in the Jacobite uprising of 1715. This resulted in the Bavington estate being forfeited to the Crown. Luckily, this disconnection was short-lived as the house was restored to the Shaftos upon the death of Admiral George Delaval, who had bought it in 1716, as he left his estate to his brother-in-law, George Shafto Delaval M.P. (1703 – 1782).[1] Robert Ingram Shafto (1770 – 1848) was the last direct descendant of William Shafto to own Bavington as he did not produce a male heir, instead it passed to his cousins, whose seat was Beamish Hall in County Durham. The Bavington estate subsequently remained in the Beamish line until the late 20th century.

[1] B. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. II, London 1839, p. 1358.