The portrait is thought to represent Sarah Hussey Apreece (1672–1749), one of the four daughters and eventual heiress of Thomas Hussey, second Baronet, of Honington, Lincolnshire and Sarah Langham, daughter of Sir John Langham. She married Robert Apreece (c.1677–1744) of Washingley, Huntingdonshire. Their children included Thomas Hussey Apreece (c.1702–1777), who inherited the estates at Honington and Washingley, and Rhoda Apreece, who inherited Doddington Hall and who in 1724 was to marry Captain Francis Blake Delaval. For a history of the Apreece family and estates at Washingley and Honington, see Nick Kingsley’s Landed Families blogspot.¹

The picture has at some stage been extended from a three-quarter- to a full-length portrait, quite probably by a member of Kneller’s workshop. Although the present portrait and DN22 have both been described traditionally as depictions of Sarah Hussey, the wife of Robert Apreece, a comparison between the faces of the two sitters suggests that they might not be the same person, even allowing for different artists and styles. It is possible therefore that DN22 (which does not have a sitter’s name inscribed) is not Sarah Hussey Apreece but her younger sister, Elizabeth (1688–1724). As Cole noted, in the late nineteenth century the present portrait hung in the Long Gallery as ‘a companion picture’ to Sarah Hussey’s sister Rebecca (DN1).