A Portrait of Sir Richard Sprignell When a Boy

Lely creates a contemplative mood by painting his young subject against a lush backdrop of dark foliage, his right hand resting on a book. Though his identity is unsure, the sitter has long been thought to be Richard Sprignell, the younger brother of Anne Sprignell, a noblewoman who lived in Cromwell House, near London, in the middle of the 17th century. An early 19th-century chronicler relates that “Of her brother, who died in his youth, Sir Peter Lely has painted a Portrait, which is now in [her son’s] collection, and is a chef oeuvre of that exquisite Artist.”