Portrait of three children of George Preston of Holker, aged 5 years, 4 years, and 6 months, full-length, the youngest in a blue dress with a white apron and bonnet, seated on a sundial, the other children standing in red dresses and white aprons, the right-hand child holding apples, in a landscape

When this portrait was sold by Lord Richard Cavendish at Christie's in 1930, the sitters were indentified as the three daughters of George Preston of Holker, and it was attributed to Hanneman. It seems more likely that the portrait shows the three children from George Preston's first marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of Ralph Ashton of Lever, in Lancashire; Thomas, Christopher and Frances. The Preston family had acquired the land on which Holker Hall stands, which originally belonged to the Augustinian priory of Cartmel, as well as Furness Abbey, after the dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. The Prestons made Holker their principal seat in the early 17th Century. The house was briefly sequestered by the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War but was later restored to the family, and has passed by family inheritance since. In his Dictionary of 16th & 17th Century British Painters, Ellis Waterhouse refers to a portraitist who 'signs with a monogram which appears to read as 'J.H.'' commenting that there is 'some reason to think he was mainly active in Royalist circles in the North West' and that he 'cannot be Hayls, but it is possible he may be Hesketh [?Jerome Hesketh] or Hodges [?T. Hodges]' and that 'it has been suggested he may be the 'I. Haskins' who signed a portrait of 1645 engraved by Hollar' (op.cit., pp. 115, 121 and 124). A notable group of portraits by him is at Lyme Park.