Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.56
Gallery Label:
After training with Hubert-François Gravelot, Francis Hayman, and George Lambert in London, Thomas Gainsborough returned to Suffolk and established himself as a portrait and landscape painter in the provincial port town of Ipswich. He introduced his clientele, which included local gentry and professionals, to the fashion for conversation pieces in the latest French style. Here he presents John Gravenor, a local apothecary and politician, Gravenor’s wife, Ann, and their two daughters in a productive country landscape. They sit beneath two trees at the edge of a cornfield, the interwoven trunks suggesting marital harmony and the corn representing the blessings of a fertile union. Gainsborough often worked up multifigure compositions from lay figures—small wooden dolls that could be posed for artists to work from—a practice he learned in London. He slowly abandoned these conversation pieces in Ipswich in favor of bust-length portraits such as the portrait of Susanna Gardiner (shown nearby).\n\n Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
