Gainsborough: the Fashion of Portraiture
Reviewed by Ed Voves
Original photography by Anne Lloyd
The eighteenth century counterparts of today's "jet set" or "the rich and famous" were known as "people of fashion." Part of the pleasure of being included in such elite company - then and now - is having one's portrait painted for public display or for later generations to admire at their leisure.
"People of fashion" in Great Britain were fortunate in having numerous painters of talent to record their features. This was especially true by the 1750's, by which time native-born artists had finally gained precedence over the Flemish and German portrait painters who had earlier dominated the art scene in the British Isles.
The Frick Collection is currently exhibiting the works of one of the most successful and influential portrait painters of the Georgian Era. This is what historians call the period, in reference to the three successive monarchs, all named George, who reigned during the eighteenth century.
After viewing this magnificent exhibit, I came away with feeling that a better title for those years would be the Age of Gainsborough.
Gainsborough's fame chiefly rests on his magnificent portraits. This is the theme of the Frick exhibition, a portal both to a long-ago epoch and to flesh and blood humanity, swathed in the latest fashion.
Amazingly, this is the first exhibition surveying Gainsborough's portraits by a New York City museum. This is a surprising development, given the rich holdings of his works at the Frick and, further up 5th Avenue, at The Met. Why? Perhaps, this is due to the many contradictions in Gainsborough's life and art.
Despite Gainsborough's success, he was never knighted, as his rival Joshua Reynolds was. Gainsborough was an outsider by birth and inclination. His family were "Non-Conformists" in the religious sense of those who would not subscribe to the theology and rituals of the Church of England. And when it came to his artistic practice, Gainsborough refused to tolerate any measure of oversight or interference from the official Royal Academy, presided over by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
This brief account of Gainsborough's background underscores how ironic, almost humorously so, was his acclaim and status as one of the leading portrait painters of "people of fashion."
Gainsborough did not particularly enjoy immortalizing the British aristocracy. Of England's "milords" and country gentlemen, he declared, "they have but one part worth looking at and that is their purse."
Gainsborough's character was complex and compromised, especially his attitude to marital fidelity. The Frick exhibition, wisely, steers clear of this issue and controversy, in general. An so shall we, except to stop for a moment's reflection before the portrait of his wife, Margaret, painted in 1777-78.
Without a doubt this is a loving image, perhaps the greatest portrait of a spouse ever created and a tribute to one's soul mate. To be able to study this magnificent work at the Frick is truly an honor.
Gainsborough: the Fashion of Portraiture has many insights of value to share. These relate both to Gainsborough's life and to the role of portraiture in human society - the act of creating the public image people present to the world, while clarifying or obscuring their inner selves.
In the text of the superb catalog to the exhibition, Aimee Ng, curator at the Frick, astutely notes:
Portraits are not simply records of what people looked like and wore - though some are. What the artist painted his sitters wearing at times had little to do with how they dressed in real life and, like portraiture itself, was a construction and invention in paint.
Gainsborough, quite often, had occasion to "invent in paint" favorable images of women, subjected to the raised eyebrows, gossip and scorn of polite society.
One of the most notable instances of such invention was Gainsborough's portrait of the The Hon. Frances Duncombe, one of the treasures of the Frick. This elegant young woman, whose private life caused tongues to wag, will be featured in a forthcoming book written by Aimee Ng.
As Gainsborough's fame spread, "well-born" ladies flocked to his studios. After a few years working in his native Suffolk, Gainsborough set-up his practice in the resort city of Bath in 1759. Then, he relocated to the West End of London in 1774. His customers seldom were disappointed with their "likeness" by Gainsborough.
Thomas Gainsborough, Mary, Countess Howe, ca. 1763-1764
Mary, Countess Howe, painted at some point during the years, 1763-1764, is a particularly notable example of Gainsborough's acute perception and masterly skill. The wife of a British naval hero who was heir to a noble title, the Countess Howe had been born Mary Hartopp of a Nottinghamshire family far down in the ranks of the social register. But you would never know that looking at the hauteur of her pose and the gleam in her eyes, bewitching and calculating in equal measure.
Entering the two exhibition galleries at the Frick can - at least initially - be disorienting. There are twenty-five paintings on view, several of them full-length, almost life-sized, portraits of "women of fashion." The scale of these paintings and the shimmer of silk and glistening pearls can make for sensory-overload. It really takes some effort straining your neck to glimpse the faces of Gainsborough's female protagonists.
Gainsborough came from a family involved in the fabric trade. He thus had an insider's knowledge of handling silk and satin, velvet and lace.
Gainsborough also acquired first-hand experience of the "cut-throat" nature of business practice in Georgian England. His father's textile firm went bankrupt when he was a boy. Shortly afterward, he was sent to London to learn the engraver's trade. It was there that he took night-school painting classes at the St. Martin's Lane Academy managed by the redoubtable William Hogarth.
Like Hogarth, Gainsborough was single-minded and determined to paint his own way. In the mid-eighteenth century, there was a vogue for dressing-up in gowns and tunics of the type appearing in the seventeenth century portraits by Anthony van Dyck. Except in certain instances - The Blue Boy, being the most celebrated example - Gainsborough would have none of this.
Gainsborough insisted that his patrons wear the clothing of the present-day. Many of them, initially pleased, would bring their portraits back after styles had changed, to have them repainted in the latest fashion. Gainsborough took it in stride.
"I am very well aware of the Objection to modern dresses in Pictures," Gainsborough wrote to Lord Dartmouth, "that they are soon out of fashion and look awkward; but as that misfortune cannot be helped we must set it against the unluckiness of fancied dresses taking away Likenesses, the principle beauty and intention of a portrait."
In the case of the portrait of Elizabeth Moody (1756-1782), who died from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six, Gainsborough was commissioned to rework it, but not because of a change in fashion.
The painting we see, from the collection of the Dulwich Picture Library, is very different from the first version of the work. This had likely been painted at the time of her marriage in 1779. But it was not until 1989, that the radical extent of the difference was established.
At the time of her death, Elizabeth Moody had two young sons, Samuel (twenty months old) and Thomas (eight months). The children in the painting, however, are much older.
Furthermore, art historians noted that Mrs. Moody's right hand, holding young Thomas, was awkwardly painted by Gainsborough's standards. By comparison, her left hand, grasping Samuel's arm, is beautifully composed.
This explanation, having brilliantly solved the mystery of this poignant work of art, should not distract us from the more fundamental message of Gainsborough's art. This is visible in the astonishing way Gainsborough articulated the face of young Samuel Moody (above), his mother and little brother - and all of the other subjects of Gainsborough's "pencil", as paint brushes were then called.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026)
A Gainsborough grand-portrait is, almost without exception, not an example of beautiful clothing "making" the woman or man who posed before his easel. However great his facility in depicting the costumes of his subjects, Gainsborough's ability in summoning-forth their humanity with oil on canvas was greater still.
Let the last word be Gainsborough's, from a quote mentioned earlier.
"Likenesses," Thomas Gainsborough said, are "the principle beauty and intention of a portrait."
***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved
Original photography, copyright of Anne Lloyd
Introductory Image: Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Gallery view of Gainsborough: the Fashion of Portraiture, showing Thomas Gainsborough’s Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ca. 1783.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Thomas Gainsborough’s Self-Portrait, ca. 1787. Oil on canvas: 30 7/8 x 25 3/8 in. (77.3 x 64.5 cm) Royal Academy of Arts, (03/1395)
Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727-1788) Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, ca. 1750. Oil on canvas:27 1/2 x 47 in. (69.8 x 119.4 cm) National Gallery, London (NG6301)
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Mr. and Mrs. Andrews (detail), ca. 1750.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Gallery view of Gainsborough: the Fashion of Portraiture, showing Thomas Gainsborough’s Mrs. Samuel Moody and Her Sons, Samuel and Thomas, 1779/1784. and Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ca. 1783.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026)Thomas Gainsborough's Mrs.Richard Brinsley Sheridan (detail), ca. 1783. Oil on canvas: 86 1/2 x 60 1/2 in. (251.46 x 185.42 cm.) National Gallery, Washington D.C.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026).Thomas Gainsborough’s Margaret Gainsborough (detail), ca. 1778. Oil on canvas: 30 3/16 x 25 1/8 in. (76.6 x 73.8 cm) The Courtauld, London (P.1932.SC.157)
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Amee Ng, John Updike Curator at the Frick Collection.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Thomas Gainsborough’s The Hon. Frances Duncombe (detail), ca. 1776. Oil on canvas: 92 1/4 x 61 1/8 in. (234.3 x 155.3 cm) The Frick Collection, New York
Comparisons of paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir John Burgoyne, 1766, and Thomas Gainsborough’s Captain Augustus John Hervey, later 3rd Earl of Bristol, ca. 1768.
Thomas Gainsborough (English,1727-1788) Mary, Countess Howe, 1763–64. Oil on canvas: 94 15/16 x 60 3/4 in. (243.2 x 154.3 cm) English Heritage, Kenwood House, London; The Iveagh Bequest.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Gallery view of Gainsborough: the Fashion of Portraiture.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Detail of Thomas Gainsborough’s The Hon. Frances Duncombe.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Thomas Gainsborough’s Margaret Gainsborough (detail), ca. 1778. Oil on canvas: 30 3/16 x 25 1/8 in. (76.6 x 73.8 cm) The Courtauld, London (P.1932.SC.157)
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Mrs.
Samuel Moody and Her Sons, Samuel and Thomas, ca. 1779, reworked ca.
1784. Oil on canvas: 92 1/8 x 60 11 ⁄ 16 in. (234 x 154.2 cm). Dulwich Picture
Gallery, London (DPG316)
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Thomas Gainsborough’s Grace Dalrymple Elliott (detail), 1778. Oil on canvas: 92 1/4 x 60 1/2 in. (234.3 x 153.7 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bequest of William K. Vanderbilt, 1920 (20.155.1)
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Thomas Keable in Thomas Gainsborough’s Peter Darnell Muilman, Charles Crokatt and William Keable in a Landscape, ca. 1750. Oil on canvas: 765 x 642 mm. Tate Britain/Gainsborough’s House
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2026) Thomas Gainsborough’s Ignatius Sancho, 1768. Oil on canvas: 29 x 241/2 in. (73.7 x 62.2 cm). National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Thomas Gainsborough
(English, 1727-1788) Mary, Duchess of Montagu,
ca.1768. Oil on canvas: 49 1/4 x 39 1/2 in. (125.1 x
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