The Artist with his Wife and Daughter by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1748. Oil on canvas, 92.1 x 70.5 cm. Acquired under the acceptance-in-lieu scheme at the wish of Sybil, Marchioness of Cholmondeley, in memory of her brother, Sir Philip Sassoon, 1994, NG6547. © The National Gallery, London. 

LONDON.- The National Portrait Gallery London has brought together for the first time all twelve surviving portraits of Thomas Gainsborough’s daughters in a major new exhibition, Gainsborough’s Family Album. The portraits, which trace the development of the Gainsborough girls from playful young children to fashionable adults, include such famous images as The Artist’s Daughters chasing a Butterfly (c.1756) and The Artist’s Daughters with a Cat, (c.1760-1). These can be seen alongside rarely seen paintings, such as the grand double full-length of Mary and Margaret Gainsborough as sumptuously-dressed young women (c.1774). 

The Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1756. Oil on canvas, 113.5 x 105 cm. Henry Vaughan Bequest, 1900, NG1811. © The National Gallery, London. 

Painter's Daughters with a Cat by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1760-61. Oil on canvas, 75.6 x 62.9 cm. Bought, 1923, NG3812. © The National Gallery, London. 

Margaret and Mary Gainsborough by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1770-74. Private Collection. © David Stubbs/Image-Maker/Private Collection

Featuring over fifty works from public and private collections across the world, Gainsborough’s Family Album provides a unique insight into the private life and motivations of one of Britain’s greatest artists. The exhibition includes a number of works that have never been on public display in the UK, including an early portrait of the artist’s father John Gainsborough (c. 1746-8) and a drawing of Thomas and his wife Margaret’s pet dogs, Tristram and Fox. 

Tristram and Fox by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1760s. Private Collection.

Thomas Gainsborough, (1727–88), was one of Britain’s most successful eighteenth-century portraitists, but in his private correspondence he lamented that the need to earn his living from an endless parade of ‘damnd Faces’ prevented him for pursuing his devotion to landscape, the branch of art he most loved. Nonetheless, he still managed to find the time, the energy and the desire to paint more portraits of his family members than any other artist of his or any earlier period is known to have produced. These include pictures of himself, his father, his wife, his daughters, two sisters and two brothers, a brother-in-law, two nephews, one niece, and a few more distant connections, not to mention his dogs. The vast majority of these works stayed with the family throughout the painter’s lifetime, by the end of which he had single handedly created an unusually comprehensive visual record of an eighteenth-century British kinship network, with several of its key players shown more than once, at different stages of their lives. 

Thomas Gainsborough by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1758-1759,oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm. Accepted in lieu of tax by HM Government and allocated to the Gallery, 1965, 4446. © National Portrait Gallery, London. 

Gainsborough’s Family Album charts Gainsborough’s career from youth to maturity, telling the story of an eighteenth-century provincial artist’s rise to metropolitan fame and fortune. However, alongside this runs a more private narrative about the role of portraiture in the promotion of family values, at a time when these were in the process of assuming a recognizably modern form. The exhibition both offers a new perspective on Gainsborough the portraitist and challenges our thinking about his era and its relationship to our own. 

Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London, says: ‘We are delighted to be able to bring together so many of Gainsborough’s family portraits for the first time. The exhibition, which is unique in focusing on his paintings made for love, rather than for money, provides an unprecedented opportunity to see the intimate and personal aspect of Gainsborough’s portraits through this remarkable body of works depicting ‘ordinary people’ from a time when portraiture was almost exclusively confined to the rich, the famous and the upper classes’. 

Professor David Solkin, Exhibition Curator and Emeritus Professor of the Courtauld Institute of Art says: ‘My hope is that Gainsborough’s Family Album will prompt new ways of thinking about Gainsborough, and about the family albums that so many of us create’. 

Gainsborough’s Family Album is curated by Professor David Solkin, with support from Dr Lucy Peltz, Senior Curator, 18th Century Collections and Head of Collections Displays (Tudor to Regency), at the National Portrait Gallery. Professor Solkin is one of the world’s leading authorities on the history of British art. He joined The Courtauld Institute of Art in 1986 and completed his career there as Walter H. Annenberg Professor of the History of Art and Dean and Deputy Director. He has published extensively on eighteenth-century art and culture, is the author of four major books, the latest of which are: Painting out of the Ordinary: Modernity and the Art of Everyday Life in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain (Yale, 2008); and Art in Britain 1660-1815 (2015). He has also curated several important exhibitions including, most recently, Turner and the Masters (2009). 

Dr Peltz joined the National Portrait Gallery in 2001 as Curator of 18th Century Collections and has curated several permanent galleries, temporary exhibitions and displays including The Regency in the Weldon Galleries (2003-); Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings (2008); Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance (2010-11) and Simon Schama’s Face of Britain (2014-15), a project which resulted in a TV series, a -Viking-Penguin book and an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. 

The exhibition will tour to Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey from 23 February – 5 June 2019.

Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist’s Daughters by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1760-1, oil on canvas (two canvases joined). Bequeathed by John Forster, F.9. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist’s Wife by Thomas Gainsborough, c 1777, The Samuel Courtauld Trust. © The Courtauld Gallery, London.

Tristram and Fox by Thomas Gainsborough, c 1775-85. Oil on canvas, 61 x 50.8 cm. Presented by the family of Richard J. Lane 1896, N01483. © Tate.

Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist’s Daughters, at their Drawing by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1763-4. Oil on canvas. Museum purchase, 1917.181. © Worcester Art Museum.

Gainsborough Dupont, the Artist’s Nephew by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1770-5. Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 36.2 cm. Bequeathed by Lady d'Abernon 1954, N06242. © Tate, London 2018.

Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughter, as a Gleaner by Thomas Gainsborough c.1760-1, oil on canvas, 73 x 63 cm. Purchased with the assistance of a gift in memory of Helen, Henry and Marius Winslow and the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, 1975, WA1975.72. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.