The Hon. Theresa Robinson, Mrs Parker (1744-1775), and her Son, John Parker, later 1st Earl of Morley (1772-1840)

Reynolds painted Theresa Robinson, Mrs. Parker, with her infant son John Parker around 1778, creating a double portrait that combines maternal warmth with the compositional authority of his Grand Manner at its most controlled. Reynolds had a long association with the Parker family of Saltram House in Devon — his home county — and this painting forms part of an extended series of Parker family portraits that now constitute one of the finest domestic groupings of Reynolds's work in situ. The infant John Parker would grow up to become the 1st Earl of Morley, and his mother died just three years after this portrait was painted — making Reynolds's record of their relationship particularly poignant. Reynolds painted Theresa Robinson a second time in 1771 (the large full-length, also at Saltram), and the comparison between those two works documents the evolution of his approach to female portraiture over a seven-year period. His successor Thomas Lawrence would later develop the maternal portrait format along more emotionally heightened lines, but Reynolds's version remains the standard from which Lawrence departed. Now in a National Trust property at Saltram, the painting hangs within a few steps of several other Reynolds works in the context for which they were created.

This work demonstrates Joshua Reynolds's command of Romantic-period painting techniques.