In 1761, Jonathon Sayward (1713-1797) commissioned Joseph Blackburn, then residing in Portsmouth, to paint a portrait of his daughter Sally.  Sally was the Saywards’ only child.   At the time her portrait was painted, the twenty-three-year-old and her two-year-old daughter were living with her parents while her husband, Portsmouth merchant Nathaniel Barrell, was in the midst of a three-year business trip to England.  The painting shows a typically idealized image of eighteenth-century womanhood, with Mrs. Barrell loosely holding a basket of roses over one arm and a rose bud in the other hand.  After Barrell’s return to York, he and Sally moved to a farm nearby.  Soon after, he broke with his father-in-law over religious differences and for a time refused to allow his children to see their grandfather.   The rift lasted for seventeen years during which time Sally’s portrait hanging in the Sayward’s parlor must have served as a poignant reminder of family troubles.