On stylistic grounds this double portrait study may be dated to the early 1730s.  The lady’s headdress and the turn of her head relates to Hogarth’s depiction of Mrs Ashley Cowper in the group portrait Ashley Cowper with his wife and Daughter of 1731 (Tate Gallery).  The buff ground on which this study is painted is also visible in the later and much larger unfinished Head of a Lady, called Lady Pembroke in the Tate Gallery.

It has been suggested that the study may represent Mary Edwards (d.1743) wife of Lord Anne Hamilton, and her son Gerard Anne Edwards (b.4 March 1732).  Mary Edwards Hamilton was a significant patron of Hogarth, commissioning a portrait of Gerard Anne as a baby in his cot in 1732 (Upton House) and a family group portrait in 1733-4 and purchasing his Southwark Fair in 1734.  One of Hogarth’s finest female portraits is the later seated portrait of Mary Edwards in the Frick Collection, New York.