In this painting three life-size busts of the children of Frederick V and Elizabeth of Bohemia are painted within illusionistic oval frames on one canvas. The eldest boy, Frederick Henry (1614-29) is shown on the left; his younger brother Charles Louis (1617-80) is in the centre, with their sister Elizabeth (1618-80) on the right. All three children wear wide collars and Charles and his sister are dressed identically; at this time it was customary for younger boys to wear dresses until they were ‘breeched’.

Elizabeth of Bohemia was the eldest daughter of James I and Anne of Denmark, whose exile from her husband's kingdoms - the Palatinate and Bohemia - made her a heroine of the Protestant cause throughout the seventeenth century. Abraham van der Doort described this painting in the Privy Gallery at Whitehall Palace, noting that it had been brought from Heidelberg in the Palatinate by Sir Henry Wotton and given to James I.

The painting is first recorded in its current position - as an overdoor in the Green Drawing Room in Buckingham Palace - in 1841. By this time the identification had been lost and the three children were described as Prince Arthur, Prince Henry and Princess Margaret, children of Henry VII. Presumably the red and white roses encouraged this mis-reading.