Gainsborough's family album - Thomas Gainsborough

Despite this famous protestation in
a letter to his friend William Jackson, Gainsborough was
clearly prepared to make an exception when it came to making portraits of his own family and
himself. This book,
and the major exhibition it accompanies, features a dozen portraits of his
daughters Mary and Margaret, the same number of himself and his wife Margaret (though,
perhaps tellingly, only one of the couple together), as well as works depicting four of his five
siblings,
his handsome nephew Gainsborough Dupont (who became his studio assistant) , an
aunt and uncle, several in - laws and - last, but not least
- his beloved dogs, Tristram and Fox.

Spanning more than four decades,
Gainsborough's family portraits chart the period from the
mid - 1740s, when he plied his trade in his native Suffolk , through his time in Bath ( 1758 - 74 ), when he established hi mself with a rich and
fashionable clientele , to his most successful
latter
years at his luxuriously appointed studio in London's We st End. Alongside this story of a
provincial 18th - century artist's rise
to fame and fortune runs a more private narrative, ab out
the role of portraiture in the promotion of family values, at a time when these were assuming
a recogni s ably modern form.

In the first of three introductory essays, David
H.
Solkin writes on Gainsborough himself,
placing his family portraits in the
context of earlier practice
- including
that of the Flemish
master Peter Paul Rubens and British portraitists from
Mary Beale to Joseph Highmore . Ann Bermingham explores Gainsborough's portraits of his daughters, with particular reference to
two finished double portraits painted seven years apart and the tragic story arising from them. Susan Sloman discusses Margaret's
role as her husband's business manager,
its
effect on the
family dynamic and hence the visual representation of its members.