Jane Bowles (1772–1812) was the eldest child of Oldfield Bowles of North Aston, an amateur painter of some distinction. When deciding which painter to employ to paint his daughter, Bowles invited Reynolds to dinner to see how he got on with his potential subject. According to Reynolds’s nineteenth-century biographer, Leslie: ‘the little girl was placed next to Sir Joshua at the dessert, where he amused her so much with stories and tricks that she thought him the most charming man in the world. … The next day she was delighted to be taken to his house, where she sat down with a face full of glee, the expression of which he caught at once and never lost’.