The young subject of this charming early seventeenth-century portrait was once thought to be the Countess of Pembroke. However, the contemporaneous holder of that title was a mature woman by 1619 – the year this portrait was painted - and not aged five, as the sitter is described. A portrait miniature [Fig. 1], which seemingly portrays the same young girl with flowing blond hair, who is also described as being five years old in 1619, apparently depicts a member of the Culpeper family. Whilst the identification is based on that picture having been found in the garden of Preston Hall in Kent, the family seat of the Culpepers, there is little doubt that the same subject is the sitter in the present portrait. Whilst the miniature’s composition is limited in scope, the sitter is here shown full-length, wearing a deep purple embroidered dress, covered in silver spangles, with a linen-lace skirt – complete with intricately patterned bobbin lace insertions and edging – that has likely been dyed in saffron, along with her falling lace ruff and cutwork cuffs. The portrait’s setting is non-descript bar a subtle grey velvet curtain for a backdrop and an obedient dog for company. With her left hand she gestures towards the dog, as though she has just commanded it to sit, whilst her right hand holds a dyed ostrich feather fan. The artist has taken some trouble to articulate the pleating of the lace insertions within the girl’s skirt, similarly within the carefully placed highlights on the dog’s fur. The dog’s presence, in symbolic terms, could represent the sitter’s future as a loyal and loving companion to a spouse; ultimately demonstrating marital faithfulness akin to the inherent fidelity of a dog’s character. The present painting is known to have been in the collection of the Booth family, whose seat was Glendon Hall in Northamptonshire [Fig. 2], for nearly two hundred years, if not longer. The Booths had acquired the estate from the Lane family in 1758 and it is thought that many of the former owners’ paintings were included with the sale of the house. One of these was a portrait of Katherine Parr (National Portrait Gallery, London), the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, which had come to belong to Sir Ralph Lane (1509 – 1540), who had married Maud Parr, a cousin and Lady in Waiting to Katherine Parr. It is known that ownership of this portrait was transferred to the Booth family when they purchased Glendon from the Lanes in 1758 so it is more than plausible that the same happened to our portrait. Glendon remained in the Booth family until it was ultimately bequeathed to Phyillis Gompertz, née Booth, who sold its contents at Christie’s upon inheriting the estate in 1953. The artist Paul van Somer (also known as Paulus) was a Flemish émigré, as were many other painters in England at the time. He came to London from Antwerp in 1616, and was immediately appointed court painter to James I, bringing with him a new grandeur and naturalism to British royal iconography. Two of his best-known works are his portraits of James I from 1616 and of Queen Anne in hunting attire with her dogs, from 1617 (Hampton Court). These very much established Van Somer’s position as the royal favourite, supplanting John de Critz and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Surprisingly little is known of Van Somer’s training, given he arrived in England as a mature artist, but according to Karel van Mander, he was the brother of the artist Barend van Someren. As well as the king and queen, his patrons included powerful members of the royal circle, such as Ludovic Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, Elizabeth, Countess of Huntingdon, Lady Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent, and Lady Anne Clifford, who referred in her diary to sitting to Van Somer on 30 August 1619. In many ways, Van Somer can be said to have paved the way at the British court for fellow Flemish artists Daniel Mytens and Sir Anthony Van Dyck, much as Jacob de Critz and Marcus Gheeraerts had made way for him. Indeed, Mytens settled in London by 1618, where he was Van Somer’s close neighbour in St. Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden.