Dorothy Walpole (1686-1726) was the sister of Sir Robert Walpole, the father of Horace Walpole. She married Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend of Raynham in 1713. The coat-of-arms is that of Townshend impaling Walpole. It, along with the inscription, was probably added by Horace Walpole when the picture hung in his gothic-revival villa Strawberry Hill. The sitter wears Turkish-style dress of a kind fashionable from c.1718. A somewhat simplified version of the picture is in the National Portrait Gallery. The hand from an underlying figure is visible in the sky.
