The Embroidered Dress

The second son of the miniaturist Bernard Lens (the first artist in Britain to paint miniatures on ivory), Andrew Benjamin Lens (1714-c.1779) was formally apprenticed to his father in 1728 at the age of fourteen. He exhibited at the Free Society and Society of Artists between 1764 and 1779. Upon his father’s death in 1740 he was bequeathed the sum of £250 whereas his younger brother, Peter Paul Lens, was bequeathed ‘One Shilling and no more’ as he had ‘for a long time past behaved himself with great Disrespect Disobedience and Undutifullness’ towards his father and his mother.