Sir Peter Lely (Soest, Westphalia 1618-1680 London)

The sitter, the sister of Sir Thomas Lee, 1st Bt. (1635-1690), of Hartwell House, near Aylesbury, married Sir John Morley of Bere Court, near Reading, a prominent Royalist in the English Civil War, who lead the forces that seized Chichester from the Parliamentarians in 1642. This portrait is thought likely to have been executed early in the artist's career, in the mid-to-late 1650s. Lely's portrait of Sir Thomas Lee, 1st Bt., similarly believed to have been executed in the mid-to-late 1650s is in Leicester City Art Gallery (R.B. Beckett, Lely, London, 1951, p. 50, no. 285, pl. 43).