The paintings are included in the Catalogue Raisonné of the paintings of Sir Peter Lely, by Sir Oliver Millar and Diana Dethloff. We are grateful to them both for their kind assistance with the cataloguing of this pair of paintings.

The paintings are in fine carved-wood frames, which date from around 1740. The frames are English, but the design has distinct northern European overtones. There is a painting by Lely in the same frame in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which was purchased directly from Horace Walpole’s sale in 1842. However, the painting was already in the frame when Walpole acquired it in 1776 at the sale of its previous owner, a Mr Lovibord. So it is most likely that Mr Lovibord was the owner of this pair of paintings, which, should the portrait of the young lady have come from the Strawberry Hill Collection, have been reunited between 1842 and the 1880s, when Charles Butler bought them.

A Boy as a Shepherd has now been identified as a portrait of Bartholomew Beale, painted between 1658-60.

The young lady may be Mary Beale's sister Alice Beale. The pose is similar to a now lost securely dated portrait of 1665. She is also reminiscent in looks to those models in Lely’s famous series of paintings The Windsor Beauties. These portraits represent the most influential and beautiful women of the court and their faces became patterns for many of Sir Peter Lely’s other important commissions. When the painting of the young man was exhibited at the Royal Academy at The Age of Charles II exhibition in 1960-1, Sir Oliver Millar expressed the opinion that the sitter may well have been Mary Beale's son.

Beginning his career as a painter after the death of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Sir Peter Lely became the most respected and wealthy painter of his day. He was a pupil of Frans Pieterszon de Grebber in Haarlem and in 1637, he accompanied William II of Orange to England where the prince married the daughter of Charles I. Lely fell into favor with the King and during the Civil War he painted his portrait in prison shortly before his execution. In 1660, the new King Charles II gave Peter Lely the title of ‘Court Painter.’ He was knighted, and was appointed chamberlain, which entitled him to a fixed pension and it became the height of English fashion to be painted by him in his studio in Convent Garden.