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| Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly. Thomas Gainsborough, c. National Gallery. |
Today, surrounded by images of family and friends, it’s easy
to forget how rare it was for people in the 18th c to have any form
of likeness of those close to them. Royalty and the rich could commission
portraits for posterity, but the majority of ordinary people went unrecorded.
This is what makes the paintings in the National Portrait Gallery’s latest
exhibition so unusual – and special. Gainsborough’s Family Album brings
together for the very first time virtually all of the artist’s images of himself
and his extended family across the years – some 50 in all. The curators have
gathered them from far and near – one was rediscovered in private hands just
weeks ago, having last been seen in public in 1882. We see affectionate
portrayals of his daughters Margaret and Mary as they grow from little girls chasing
a butterfly, to their transformation into young ladies, sumptuously dressed and
ready to take their places in society. His wife, also Margaret, is there,
growing greyer over the years, and his brother John, known as Scheming Jack
because of his many failed money-making schemes, also puts in an appearance,
along with the family’s dogs.
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| Tristram and Fox, by Thomas Gainsborough, Image c.Tate London |
Thomas
Gainsborough (1727 – 88) was one of Britain’s most successful eighteenth
century portraitists, a favourite of royalty, but in his private correspondence he lamented
the need to earn his living from an endless parade of ‘damn’d Faces’ when he’d
have preferred to concentrate on landscapes. However, the faces were where the
money was. His father, a Suffolk clothes merchant, had been forced into
bankruptcy, and had to be rescued by a wealthy nephew. The shadow of this must
have played a part in young Thomas’s pursuit of fame and fortune. He began young.
Having shown some artistic talent, he was apprenticed when he was 13 to an
illustrator in London. By the unusually early age of 16 he set up his own
studio in Hatton Garden, and three years later met and married Margaret Burr,
the illegitimate daughter of Henry, 3rd Duke of Beaufort, whose
family gave her an annuity of £200 for the rest of her life. He celebrates his new family in a rural setting with their first child, who died while young.
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| The Artist with his Wife Margaret and Eldest Daughter Mary, Thomas Gainsborough,c National Gallery, London |
The couple returned to Sudbury where two more
daughters were born. Gainsborough quickly realised that there were not enough
potential customers for his paintings in the little town, and in 1752 the
family moved to nearby Ipswich, where he developed a moderately successful
practice. He experimented artistically, using the family as subjects.
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| Mary and Margaret Gainsborough with a Cat c.National Gallery, London |
By 1858 he was running out of
potential clients, so spent a trial season in fashionable Bath. The following
year he settled there with his family, leasing a house in a stylish part of
town. This was large enough to accommodate other members of his extended
family, including his widowed sister, Mary Gibbon, who set up a millinery shop
in part of the building. It also served as a showroom. Prospective customers
could see examples of his work on the walls, including portraits of the artist
and his wife Margaret (who acted as his business manager), enabling them to
compare art with life. Work prospered and he took on his one and only
apprentice, his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont, whom he also painted, looking as
if he’d just stepped out of the court of Charles I.
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| Gainsborough Dupont, the Artist's Nephew, by Thomas Gainsborough Waddesdon (Rothschild Family) |
But a serious illness
reminded him of life’s precariousness. He arranged for his daughters to have art
lessons, not just as a ladylike accomplishment, but to enable them to earn a
living if necessary. He captured them practising their drawing, although it seems
none of their work survived.
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| Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters, at their Drawing by Gainsborough c Worcester Art Museum |
Having been a founding member of the Royal
Academy in 1768, Gainsborough’s final move was to London in 1774, and a
magnificent new residence at Schomberg House in Pall Mall. Here he mixed with
the highest in the land – not bad for a provincial painter from Sudbury. This formal,
full-length portrait of his girls greeted visitors – proof that they, and their
family, had arrived.
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| Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters, by Gainsborough. Private Collection |
His wife, Margaret, was enjoying their new life as well. She's shown dressed in the very height of fashion, wearing an elaborate lace cap and a fur-lined wrap.
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| Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Wife, by Gainsborough. Courtauld Gallery, London |
By now it was time for her daughters to marry, and Mary fell in love with an oboist, Johann Christian Fischer, of whom her father apparently didn't approve. The marriage lasted a matter of months. Mary was
having mental health problems, and she moved in with Margaret, who cared for her for the rest of her life. The grand double portrait is
the only one of the family paintings to have been completely finished by
Gainsborough. As we see in the exhibition, with these he usually concentrated
on the face, hands, and garments, and filled in the background with a sketchier
treatment. It may have been his way of saying these were private, and not for
sale, but perhaps could also reflect the pressure put upon him to get back
to the money-making business of commissioned portrait painting. (The freer
brush strokes crept into some of these paintings as well, prompting complaints from clients.)
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| Self-portrait by Gainsborough 1758 - 59 c. National Portrait Gallery |
In
1788 he realised he was suffering from terminal cancer, and began to put his
affairs in order. He wrote to his life-long rival, Sir Joshua Reynolds,
inviting him to visit, and confided his great regret of dying before, as he saw it, his
talents had reached their full potential. Wishing to control his posthumous
image, he identified the self portrait he wished to have engraved as his memorial,
and asked posterity to judge him by the standards of the artist he most
revered, Sir Anthony van Dyck. He died with an earlier, unfinished painting
of his nephew on an easel by his bed, in the hope that he would be his artistic heir. Sadly, Dupont outlived his uncle by just a decade.
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| Gainsborough Dupont, the Artist's Nephew, c.Tate, London |
Gainsborough's Family Album is at the National Portrait Gallery until Feb 3 2019. £12.50 – £16.00
