Many women garnered recognition as celebrated miniaturists in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, at a time when it was more difficult to do so in the field of oil painting, for instance. Over 20 portrait miniatures in the Royal Collection are attributed to Anne Mee, a professional portrait painter who trained with her father John Foldsone, and was a pupil of the famous portraitist George Romney.

Her most important commission was a series of paintings of fashionable Regency women called the ‘Gallery of Beauties’. The series demonstrates Mee’s characteristic large eyes, mastery of rich colouring and in some cases the seamless and sophisticated marriage between sitter and setting, as here in the portrait of Lady Sarah Bayley.