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In this self portrait Mary Beale lays aside her brush and palette, as it were, and takes up the accoutrements of aristocratic fantasy. Paintings showing women in the guise of shepherdesses were popular throughout this period - Mary Beale's later portrait of Lady Leigh as a Shepherdess 1676 (Manor House Museum, Bury St Edmunds) is comparable and like the present example owes something to the example of Sir Peter Lely. The painter's son Charles who was to become a portraitist in his own right and from the earliest was an assistant in her studio is shown piping to her to complete a composition whose moode vokes the Arcadian idylls of Classical poetry.