Description

Gainsborough's sensitive oil sketch of his eldest daughter Mary was painted in the 1770s when she was in her mid twenties. This intimate portrait captures her beauty but also suggests something of an unsettled state of mind. It was painted on a used piece of canvas; on its verso is a portrait study of a man thought to be Gainsborough Dupont, the artist's nephew and assistant. Thomas Gainsborough worked for some years in the fashionable town of Bath, and it was here where Mary met the famous oboist Johann Christian Fischer, who had moved to London in 1768 from the court of Frederick the Great. They married in 1780 but separated in less than a year, with Mary returning to her family, already showing signs of ill health.

Thomas Gainsborough is often pitted against his contemporary and rival, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy, which was founded in 1768 with Gainsborough as one of its founder members. Gainsborough's relationship with the Royal Academy was a troubled one, and after quarrelling with them over the hanging of his pictures, he decided to exhibit instead at his home, Schomberg House on Pall Mall, to which he had moved in 1774. Gainsborough painted his daughters often, recording their likenesses from childhood to womanhood. A related portrait of Mary, with a similarly placed rose, is part of the Tate collection; portraits of the girls as children can be seen in the National Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.