A Family, probably the Streatfeild Family

William Dobson, 1611–1646

ca. 1645

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

This group portrait by William Dobson represents the Streatfeild family, with the eldest daughter singled out as recently departed and multiple skulls foreshadowing mortality. Anthony Van Dyck’s death in 1641 allowed William Dobson, an Englishman, to become the preeminent court portrait painter. Dobson’s sixty or so surviving canvases were all painted during the early 1640s in Oxford, where Charles I held court during the Civil War. When Oxford fell to the Parliamentarians, Dobson moved to London, where, lacking patronage, he was imprisoned for debt and died aged thirty-six. This group portrait is a remarkable representation of a gentry family: the Streatfeilds were ironmasters and wool merchants who rose to become landowners in Kent. It is also a memento mori portrait. The mother points toward her eldest