Enlightenment ideas about childhood found their visual expression in the sensitive and captivating portraits of children by Joseph Wright of Derby and his contemporaries, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. As in this work, portraits of the later 18th century frequently portrayed children wearing looser white clothing, to allow their freedom and symbolise their innocence, and with animals, underlining the importance of both work and play in childhood.

Wright’s account book lists ‘A full length of Miss Bentley, £31-10’, but gives no further clues as to the identity of the sitter. It has previously been suggested that she was the daughter of Mary Stamford (d. 1797) and Thomas Bentley (1731-1780), a porcelain manufacturer, business partner of Josiah Wedgwood and a patron of Wright. However, Bentley died childless in 1780, and it is not known whether they were otherwise related. Wright painted several other sitters with the surname of Bentley, but it is not clear whether the present sitter was connected to any of them. At the time of his 1968 catalogue, Benedict Nicolson was not aware of this portrait, but noted that the entry for Miss Bentley was listed in the account book amongst other late works. More recently, Martin Postle (private communication) agrees with this dating and suggests it was probably painted c. 1794, in the last years of Wright’s life.

We are grateful to Martin Postle for his assistance with the cataloguing of the present work, and for suggesting a date of c. 1794.