John Parker, later 1st Earl of Morley (1772-1840), and his Sister Theresa Parker, later the Hon. Mrs George Villiers (1775-1856), as children

Reynolds painted the Parker children — John and Theresa Parker of Saltram — around 1780, as part of the extended series of family portraits that constitute the most significant single body of his work in a domestic setting. Reynolds visited Saltram House in Devon multiple times across several decades, painting almost every member of the Parker family in a sustained collaboration that gave the house's interiors a visual coherence unique among English country houses of the period. The children's portrait captures John Parker (later 1st Earl of Morley) and Theresa Parker with the unaffected charm that Reynolds consistently brought to childhood subjects, posed in a sunny Arcadian landscape that contrasts with the more formal settings of his adult portraits. Reynolds's child pictures draw on a complex pictorial tradition: the innocence of childhood had been a subject since Rubens and Van Dyck, but Reynolds refreshed the tradition through Correggio's influence and through his own direct observation of children in unguarded moments. John Parker's later ennoblement makes this record of his childhood part of the Morley family's dynastic narrative, while Theresa Parker's subsequent life as the Hon. Mrs George Villiers extends the family history beyond the frame. The painting remains at Saltram, one of the finest examples of Reynolds's engagement with a single family's life over time.

Reynolds's child portraits show a warmth and immediacy his adult subjects sometimes lack. The children's soft, rounded forms are painted with tender attention, their expressions animated and natural. The landscape behind them is freely painted, serving as a backdrop rather than a fully realized setting.