I recently stumbled across this beautiful portrait in the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Once I got past the beautiful fabrics and luxurious pearls (they always pull me in) – there was something else that struck me…

The squirrel.

I wondered if it was a symbol of something, but it turns out that actually, it wasn’t. Instead, it shows something we might find hard to believe today: that squirrels were common pets in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both in Britain and America.

This portrait shows Olive Craster, an heiress who travelled widely with her husband.

Besides her partiality for a squirrel as a companion, Craster’s portrait also shows a woman with incredible taste in those beautiful bows, jewels and laces: Craster reportedly had an eye for gorgeous clothes and accessories.

This was painted in Rome by British artist Nathaniel Dance-Holland.

Dance-Holland spent over a decade in Italy and was a foundation member of the Royal Academy, as well as a HUGE admirer of perhaps the most famous painter of Brits abroad, Pompeo Batoni. Interestingly, Dance-Holland later gave up being a professional artist and became an MP after inheriting a fortune and then marrying a wealthy widow…

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Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland, Portrait of Olive Craster, c.1762. Minneapolis Institute of Art.