The Woodley Family (oil on canvas)

This is a group family portrait, or conversation-piece in a landscape. It was painted around 1766 when William Woodley MP (1728-1793), the father of the group, became the Governor of the Leeward Islands for the first time (a post that he was to hold until 1771 and again from 1792 until his death). William was also Lt-Governor of Antigua (1768–88 and 1792–3). Both the motif of the greyhound (‘windhund’ in the artist's native German) coursing a hare and the relief of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia on the replica of the Medici Vase seem to be puns alluding to the prevailing trade wind in the West Indies. Both William Woodley and his wife (also his cousin) Frances Payne, Mrs Woodley (1737/8-1813) had colonial roots in St Kitt’s. She is holding their baby son, John Woodley (1766-1795), later Attorney-General of St Kitt's in 1826, to whom their elder daughter Frances Woodley, later Mrs Henry Bankes the younger (1760-1823), is offering a rose. The young child pointing to the greyhound is Harriet, or Hariot Woodley, who later married Thomas Pickard of Bloxworth (1765-1844) in 1788, and became an amateur artist. The young William Woodley (1762-1810), seen here chasing an insect, became President of St Kitts in 1807 and Lt-Governor of Berbice in 1808.