In this unusual double portrait, a young girl takes part in an intellectual discussion with an older man. With a determined look on her face, she points to a contrasting passage in the open book, asserting equal footing. The book is Catharine Macaulay’s radical History of England, the first multi-volume history of any country written by a woman to be published. The girl in the portrait, Catharine Sophia, was Macaulay’s daughter. The man, Thomas Wilson, was the rector of St. Stephen Walbrook, a London church, and the patron of an enormous altarpiece by Benjamin West in the MFA’s collection, on view in gallery 246. Wilson adopted Catharine Sophia and named her his heir the year before this painting was completed. This may be the only depiction in 18thcentury British art of two people discussing a book by a female author.

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