Mary Helen was the daughter of John and Helen Graham. She married Sir Henry Watkin Dashwood, 3rd Bt., of Kirtlington Park, Oxon on 17 July 1780. A Member of Parliament, Sir Henry represented Wigtown Burghs from 1775-1780 and was elected to represent the pocket borough of Woodstock from 1784-1820. Dressed in a dark blue gown with a white fichu, Mary Helen appears here with her son Henry George Mayne, the eldest of her five children. Henry married Marianne, daughter of Sir William Rowley, Bt., but tragically died in 1803.

Reynolds painted this tender portrait in 1784. Nine appointments with Lady Dashwood are recorded between February 16th and 30th, while her son appears to have sat only twice, on March 18th and April 3rd. Sir Henry Dashwood visited Reynolds on April 11th, most likely to inspect the painting, for which he paid 50 guineas. Five years later, Henry was painted with his siblings in the grand portrait by Sir William Beechey, sold at Christie’s, New York, 29 January 2014, lot 46. Like the Beechey portrait, Reynolds' painting would presumably have hung at the family’s home, Kirtlington Park, the famed Palladian estate designed by James Gibbs and William Smith of Warwick, with interiors by John Sanderson and gardens by Lancelot `Capability’ Brown. Its dining room, widely regarded as one of the most beautiful Rococo rooms in England, was dismantled in 1931 and installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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