This portrait depicts Sarah Parry, née Rigby (1749–1831), daughter of Sarah and John Rigby and sister of the physician Edward Rigby. She married the physician Caleb Hillier Parry (1755-1822) at Palgrave in Suffolk on 23 September 1778. Her husband developed a large practice and counted amongst his friends Edward Jenner (Jenner's book on vaccination is dedicated to him), John Hunter and Edmund Burke. His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography notes that he was one of the earliest in England to fly a hydrogen balloon (10 January 1784) as well as carrying out early clinical trials and conducting important research on the heart and arteries. In 1786 Caleb Parry inherited his mother's estates, and built a house and established a farm near Bath. Six years later he sold her properties and bought a plantation in British Guiana, which was a failure. In 1799 he joined the staff of the Bath General Hospital; in 1800 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and he and his wife moved to 27 Circus, Bath where a plaque commemorates him and his youngest son, Admiral Sir (William) Edward Parry, the Arctic explorer, who commissioned this portrait. Sarah and Caleb Parry had nine children, four boys and five girls.

The portrait is small-scale and Admiral Parry may have intended that it should travel with him on future expeditions when he commisisoned it in about the year 1824. It shows his mother dressed in her widow's black with a white collar and a white bonnet bearing an elaborate black ornament.

The Scott Polar Research Institute Archives, University of Cambridge, holds the archive of the correspondence (76 letters) between Admiral Parry and his mother between 1800 and 1831 (GB 15 Sir William Edward Parry/Correspondence).

Admiral Sir William Edward Parry paid Jackson to paint a portrait of his mother in 'about the year 1824' (see Memorandum signed by him and dated May 1851 in the Soane Archive) before he went on an expedition (he left England on 8 May 1824). On his return some time between August and November 1825 (DNB) he found the picture unfinished. When he remonstrated with the artist he records 'he returned me the money and would not let me have the picture, which I supposed he had destroyed'. Soane does not mention this picture in his 1830 Description and so it was probably acquired after that was drafted in 1829-30. It was presumably either purchased from the artist prior to his death in 1831 or acquired from his studio following his death. it appears in the later Description Soane wrote in 1835.

Soane, Description, 1835, p.16

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