Bernard Lens was the first artist in England to work in watercolour on ivory, the invention of the Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757). This portrait is on the modern support of ivory, but Lens has painted it with strong echoes of Tudor miniatures: the boy is turned nearly full to the front, painted in the clear light of day and in bright colours, and set off in sharp outline against a solid blue background. It is reminiscent of two portraits of two little girls by Isaac Oliver that are also in the V&A. Lens often painted copies on vellum (animal skin) of old miniatures for collectors who were interested in historical sitters. But this consciously old-fashioned style for a modern portrait on ivory of a child is rather unusual. Interestingly, it is one of 15 with similar blue backgrounds, which record the family of the politician Richard Whitmore, and it is possible that it was the conceit of the patron. The other miniatures show Whitmore’s wife holding a baby, the other children, including one holding a doll, another a bow and arrow, and even a portrait of a baby wrapped in swaddling, painted lengthways on an ivory oval. The V&A holds a second, of Katherine Whitmore (inv.no. P.14-1971).