A Girl with Badminton Racquet and Shuttlecock is an intriguing painting. The girl is charming, if somewhat preoccupied. In late 19th century Britain, paintings of girls with sporting gear was out of the ordinary but not entirely without precedent. The eighteenth century French painter Chardin painted a now iconic work titled Girl with Shuttlecock. Surely this painting was known to Manly. Other Victorian artists portrayed children playing croquet, tennis, on their ponies and at the beach, but these were not typically portraits of young girls. Perhaps Miss Manly, who never married, was an early suffragette.