Portrait of Catherine Murray, later Countess of Dysart, née Bruce (d. 1649), three-quarter-length, in a brown embroidered dress with blue drapery, holding flowers, in a rocky landscape

A seventeenth-century copy after the portrait in the Egremont Collection at Petworth House, West Sussex (inv. no. NT 486240). Catherine's husband, William Murray, had been a childhood friend of King Charles I and remained one of his trusted favourites. In 1626, he was made Gentleman of the Bedchamber and the family moved to Ham House near Richmond, which they renovated and lavishly refurnished to contemporary taste, and Catherine was made a lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria. After the outbreak of the Civil War, William was drawn away to fight alongside his fellow royalists, and Catherine remained at Ham House with their four daughters to safeguard it from sequestration by Parliament. William was created Earl of Dysart in 1643, although he did not take up the title until 1651; upon her death in 1649, Catherine was recorded without the title on her coffin plate.