Oil on panel, 78.7cm by 60.3cm.
Dorothy Neville was the first wife of Thomas, Ist Earl of Exeter (1542-1622), with whom she had thirteen children, nine of whom, most unusually for the time, survived to adulthood.
She was the daughter of John Neville, 4th Baron Latimer and on his death in 1577, she inherited substantial estates in Yorkshire, including that of Snape Castle.
Cornelius Johnson was an accomplished English portrait painter of Dutch or Flemish parentage.
He had a successful career painting families of the gentry and minor aristocracy for more than two decades, before moving to Amsterdam shortly after the onset of the English Civil War in 1642.
