This three-quarter-length portrait shows a young girl in a blue dress. The identities of the artist and the sitter are unknown, as is the date. Clothes can often provide clues for dating: the girl is wearing a scoop-necked blue dress with elbow-length sleeves, a full skirt and a stiffened bodice. For most of the 18th century, however, older children’s fashions were slow to change and tended to resemble those worn by adults. For this reason it can be difficult to work out the date of an anonymous portrait by the style of a child’s clothes. It is analysis of the paint used in this portrait that has dated it to about 1730.