Peter Lely is best known as being the court painter of Charles II, but today we are going to look at one of his lesser-known works.
This painting was likely completed around 1674 - 77 and it depicts two children. The girl in pink has been identified as Lady Charlotte Fitzroy, an illegitimate child of Charles II with his mistress Barbara Villiers. It was likely commissioned to celebrate Charlotte’s union with Sir Edward Henry Lee, who she was married to aged around 12 in 1677.
But what do we know of the other child depicted in the work? Identified by York Art Gallery as an ‘Indian page’, there is a sad lack of information about who this child might be, though the composition of the painting does give us some clues as to the lived reality of this sitter.
Posed very deliberately in a servile position and in an exoticised costume of striped fabric and sandals, he is painted kneeling, gazing upon Charlotte and offering her a platter of fruit. In this sense, the painting can be seen as an artistic manifestation of the issues surrounding the treatment of people of colour during this period.
It can certainly be argued that this scene was painted with the intention of emphasising Charlotte’s fulfilment of contemporary beauty standards - whilst she is painted in bright robes of pink and white silk, with a pale luminescence to her skin, the boy is almost cast in shadow. Here Lely consciously uses the darker hue of the boy’s skin to contrast with the paleness of Charlotte’s.
The use of this child as an artistic prop in this respect illustrates the problematic dynamics around race and class that were so present within this society. There is something quite poignant and chilling about the staging of such a belief system in miniature, using children, a theme repeated in various works of the period, including another of Lely’s works depicting Charlotte and her husband.
Hopefully future research will reveal more about the identity of the unknown child in this painting and the life that he went on to lead.
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