More Tea?

This charming portrait shows a little girl on a carpeted terrace playing with a miniature blue and white china tea set. She wears a tiered dress tied with a blue satin ribbon bow that matches her buckled shoes. She has a coral beaded necklace for protection from any evil spirits and discarded behind her lies her sun bonnet. The portrait is exceptionally well detailed and has an enticing view of a Scottish loch and crag with a small castle in the background.

Watercolour on card faintly signed in pencil bottom left and set with a narrow card spacer in a later gilt frame. Both the frame and the painting are in fine condition.

Born on Christmas Day 1800, Mary Ann Heaphy was the eldest of five children born to the artist Thomas Heaphy and his wife Mary Stevenson. Following her marriage to a fellow artist, she signed her work as Mary Ann Musgrave. She exhibited portrait miniatures at the Royal Academy from 1821 until her death in 1847.