There are 35 paintings by 20 different artists hanging on the walls of Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. This painting is situated in the vast Queen’s Bedroom. As the Dolls’ House was being furnished, Queen Mary took particular interest in this room, describing it in several letters as ‘my bedroom’. The two paintings in the space were therefore chosen particularly carefully, as if for a miniature Mary: one depicts the Queen’s mother, Mary Adelaide the Duchess of Teck, while this one is a portrait of the queen’s royal namesake, Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587).

Gerald Kelly, the painter of this little work, would go on to be a favourite of the Royal family, producing many portraits of King George VI and the Queen consort, Elizabeth in the 1930s and 1940s. In the early 1920s, however, he had yet to reach the height of his fame, described in The Book of the Queen's Dolls' House (1924) simply as a ‘rising portrait painter.’  

When producing this portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, Kelly did not seem to draw on one specific source of inspiration. He may well have studied the 16th-century miniatures of Queen Mary (such as 401229 and 420641), and would also have been aware of the revival of interest in this monarch in the 19th and early 20th centuries which, amongst other things, saw upper-class women take the 16th-century monarch as inspiration for their ‘fancy dress’ (2906578). Although the pinkish dress, lacy bonnet and large translucent ruff can be discerned, the portrait is sketchy. Kelly actually admitted to struggling to work in such a small format, asking for extra time to practise when invited to produce a work on paper for the Dolls’ House Library (a second contribution to the project which never, in fact, materialised).