At home with Thomas: a snapshot of Gainsborough’s Family Album

At the National Portrait Gallery, new exhibition Gainsborough’s Family Album brings together the 12 surviving portraits of Thomas Gainsborough’s daughters for the first time. Here, we look at his work The Painter’s Daughters with a Cat.

Thomas Gainsborough was unusual in that he found the time – and the desire – to paint more portraits of his family than any other artist of his or any earlier period. They were the paintings, says gallery director Dr Nicholas Cullinan, that the artist ‘made for love, rather than money’.

This particular painting dates to 1760–61. It is one of Gainsborough’s early experiments with the ‘fancy picture’, which was a popular 18th-century artistic genre that showed scenes of everyday life, with an additional sense of storytelling. The painting is of his daughters, Margaret and Mary. At first glance, the unfinished work evokes serenity and docility – but it has a mischievous twist. Look closely at Mary’s arms and you can see a sketched outline of a hissing cat. Unbeknown to Mary, her sister is pulling its tail. ‘It’s a moment quickly viewed,’ co-curator Dr Lucy Peltz explains, ‘and, even though it looks frozen in time, you get a sense that it’s part of a narrative.’

Gainsborough used a long paintbrush to create the work (it is believed that his most cherished brush was six feet long). This gave a vague quality to the painting and by being at a distance he could see the whole composition coming together. He has ‘worked up’ the faces of the girls, and sketched in the rest of their bodies.

‘Gainsborough was ahead of his time with his interest in painting family,’ Dr Peltz says. Unlike other artists of the period, who typically painted the wealthy and the famous, Gainsborough, in this intimate body of work, provides a glimpse into the life of a middle-class family. ‘He was at the heart of a family enterprise,’ Dr Peltz explains, ‘with his wife keeping his books, and his daughters in supporting roles.

His family portraits show us that no artist operates alone.’

Gainsborough’s Family Album, National Portrait Gallery, London
22 November–3 February 2019

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Image: Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist’s Daughters, Playing with a Cat The National Gallery, London