Portrait of the Honorable Mrs Grimston, née Finch, afterwards Lady Elizabeth Grimston (1650-1675), three-quarter-length, in a blue dress, resting her left arm on a pedestal

This elegant portrait of Elizabeth Grimston exemplifies the type of portrait that Lely excelled in and which helped establish his reputation as the leading painter at the Restoration court of Charles II. With Charles II’s return from the Netherlands on 25 May 1660 and his triumphal entry into London four days later, the newly reassembled court recognised the need to create a sense of continuity with the earlier court of Charles I, achieving this in part through emulation (C. Macleod, ‘‘Good but not like’: Peter Lely, Portrait Practice and the Creation of a Court Look’, in Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II, exhibition catalogue, London, National Portrait Gallery, 2001, p. 50). Lely’s established pre-eminence saw him perfectly placed to cultivate such an image and he rapidly attracted commissions from the leading men and women of the Restoration court who regarded him as the natural successor to Anthony van Dyck. Indeed, by October 1661, the king had granted him an annual pension ‘as formerly to Sr Vandyke’ of £200 as Principal Painter and, by the summer of the following year, Lely had also been given naturalisation.

The daughter of Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham (1621-1682), Attorney General and subsequently Lord Chancellor, the sitter married Samuel Grimston, later 3rd Baronet (1643-1700) in February 1670. This portrait may have passed to, or been painted for the sitter’s brother, Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham and 7th Earl of Winchilsea (1647-1730) (see provenance).