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 royal namesake, Mary, Queen of Scots, while this one – set into the room’s jade and white marble overmantel – is a portrait of the Queen’s mother, Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck (1833-97).

By the time he contributed this small work to the Dolls’ House, Frank O Salisbury was already an established society painter and had carried a variety of royal commissions, including portraits of Queen Alexandra, King George V and the Prince of Wales, and depictions of national events. This landscape-orientated portrait of Princess Mary Adelaide, less than 10cm wide, impressively captures her ermine shawl, the satin of her dress and the flowers in her hair, as well as architectural details in the background. The likeness seems to have been based on a photograph of Mary Adelaide dating from the time of her marriage to Francis, Prince of Teck, in 1866, or perhaps the miniature by Eduardo de Moira inspired by this photograph (54160).