Family Group by Wheatley, Francis

Francis Wheatley painted Family Group around 1778. It is a portrait of domestic comfort: a man, a woman, and a girl with her miniature guitar, arranged in a dark woodland. The man's hand rests on the girl's shoulder. The woman's dress is a careful study in lace and pale green. Everything about it announces a family with money.

Look first at the fabric. The lace on the woman's shawl and dress is painted with real precision, the kind of surface detail a client paid for. Then look at the hands: the man's walking stick signals status; his other hand, on the girl, signals care. The dappled light in the top foliage does quiet work, pushing the figures forward.

A portrait like this cost roughly 10 guineas in late-1770s England, an upper-middle-class sum. Wheatley built his reputation on domestic genre scenes and conversation pieces, and he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. Yet this painting never entered a museum. It passed from owner to owner, surfacing only in estate inventories and auction catalogues.

Some pictures live in public memory. Others live only in private rooms. The price of this one, now, is simply unknown, and that may be the most interesting number attached to it.