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This portrait in oil on copper is by an artist whose identity has yet to be rediscovered. The sitter is Catherine Pawson, née Fairfax. She was the daughter of the high-ranking admiral Robert Fairfax. A naval hero who was engaged in the capture of Gibraltar, he came from a distinguished martial line – his grandfather, Sir William Fairfax, had been killed fighting for the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War (his widow ‘grieved not that he died in the cause, but that he died so soon that he could do no more for it’).[1]

Given the evident young age of the sitter, it is possible if not probable that the painting was executed around the time of her marriage, which took place when she was aged eighteen on 23rd August 1720.[2] Her husband, Henry Pawson, was the son of Alderman Elias Pawson, who had been an implacable opponent of Fairfax, a fellow Alderman. He had, however, died some five years before the wedding, meaning that his personal animosity towards the father of the bride could hold no sway.

[1] ODNB

[2] C. R. Markham, The Life of Robert Fairfax of Steeton; Vice-Admiral, Alderman, and Member for York (London, 1885), p. 276.