This portrait of Sarah Oakes is thought to have been painted at the time of her marriage to Clement Mansfield Ingleby on 3rd October 1850 at Ilford, when they were both aged 26. Sarah’s mother died when she was a small child and so she went to live with her mother’s sister Margaret and her husband, Charles Thomas Holcombe. After marrying Clement Mansfield Ingleby, they settled down together at Edgbaston, near Birmingham where Clement worked as a solicitor in his father’s firm. They had four children but in August 1859 Clement’s father died and later the family returned to live at Valentines with Sarah’s uncle, Charles Thomas Holcombe. On the death of her uncle, Sarah inherited the Valentines estate and lived there until her death in 1906.