DOI issue:
No. 365 (August 1923)
DOI article:Whitley, William Thomas: The Gainsborough family portraits
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21398#0086
THE GAINSBOROUGH FAMILY PORTRAITS
the foreground lapping water, or to acquire
the art of giving his picture the air of
completeness it possesses i It is said that
even in his crudest efforts in portraiture
the likeness was exact, and if that be so
the appearance of Mrs. Gainsborough in
this picture should go far to dissipate the
legend of her extraordinary beauty. Her
comeliness is purely rustic although she
was the daughter of a duke. 0 0
For many years it was believed, on the
strength of an entry in the diary of Thomas
Green of Ipswich, that Mrs. Gainsborough,
born Margaret Burr, was a natural daughter
of one of the Dukes of Bedford ; but we
know now that Green, whose statements
are not always accurate, must have mis-
heard the lady who informed him on this
point, and who, no doubt, mentioned the
Duke of Beaufort, not Bedford. Of
Mrs. Gainsborough’s mother we have no
certain information, but there is good
reason to think that Thicknesse was right
in saying that she was of Scottish birth.
Some day I hope to be able to throw
a little light on Mrs. Gainsborough's
relations with her kinsfolk. 000
The portrait on one canvas of Gains-
borough’s two daughters holding a cat
whose outline is just discernible, must
have been painted about 1758-9, when
Mary (the little child in the group) was ten
or eleven. It belongs to the end of the
Suffolk period, near the time when Gains-
borough was planning his removal to Bath.
This portrait of the two sisters, which,
as I have said, has been acquired for the
National Gallery, is altogether different in
scale and treatment from the group.
Approximately life-size, it is painted with
the freedom and decision of an artist whose
work is a pleasure to him, and yet has
something of that pathos common to all
Gainsborough’s portraits of his daughters
when children. He was fond of painting
them together, hand-in-hand ; and hand-
in-hand they passed through life, never
separated except during Mary’s brief
experience of matrimony. And we have
learnt recently that they lie in the same
grave. 000000
When I was writing my life of Gains-
borough, I tried in vain to find their burial
place, which remained unidentified until
last year, when Mrs. Poole, the author of
66
the Oxford Catalogue of Portraits, and the
wife of Mr. Reginald Lane Poole, Keeper
of the Archives of Oxford University,
suggested that I should search the church-
yard at Hanwell. Mr. Poole is a descendant
of Gainsborough’s sister, Mrs. Gardiner,
and Mrs. Poole had found in some old
family papers a reference to Mary which
suggested that Hanwell was her place of
burial. And there I found the grave,
with inscriptions on the stone showing
not only that it covered the remains of both
sisters, but that every modern biographer
of Gainsborough, myself included, had
wrongly described Margaret as the elder.
According to the tombstone, and the church
register, Margaret, born in 1752, was four
years younger than Mary, who was born
in 1748. Margaret died in 1820, and Mary,
after being imbecile for many years, in
1826. The mistake about the relative ages
of the sisters originated in a statement by
Philip Thicknesse in his sketch of Gains-
borough’s life, published in 1788.^ 0
The pastoral, Rural Courtship, a com-
paratively early work, is an attractive
picture, of the kind that Gainsborough
loved best to paint, and of which he
produced many, both at Ipswich and Bath,
that have now disappeared. 000
Some of them were for that mysterious
early patron of Gainsborough, Panton
Betew, who must have known the artist
very well and, no doubt, could have told
us much that was interesting about the
early period of his life in London of which
our information is painfully scanty. And
of Betew himself we have little knowledge,
except that he was a kind of amateur
dealer who bought studies and sketches of
Gainsborough when he was a boy, and in
later years acquired from him important
pastorals of the type of the Rural Courtship,
but different in composition, several of
which were engraved. We know, too, from
the list Sir George Armytage published of
the weddings at the notorious Mayfair
Chapel, that Betew was married there in
17 54. It is not impossible that Gainsborough,
who had been married at the same place in
July, 1746, recommended the chapel to
his friend. Mayfair Chapel, it is worth
mentioning here, was also the scene of the
marriage of that great eighteenth century
craftsman, Thomas Chippendale. 0 0
the foreground lapping water, or to acquire
the art of giving his picture the air of
completeness it possesses i It is said that
even in his crudest efforts in portraiture
the likeness was exact, and if that be so
the appearance of Mrs. Gainsborough in
this picture should go far to dissipate the
legend of her extraordinary beauty. Her
comeliness is purely rustic although she
was the daughter of a duke. 0 0
For many years it was believed, on the
strength of an entry in the diary of Thomas
Green of Ipswich, that Mrs. Gainsborough,
born Margaret Burr, was a natural daughter
of one of the Dukes of Bedford ; but we
know now that Green, whose statements
are not always accurate, must have mis-
heard the lady who informed him on this
point, and who, no doubt, mentioned the
Duke of Beaufort, not Bedford. Of
Mrs. Gainsborough’s mother we have no
certain information, but there is good
reason to think that Thicknesse was right
in saying that she was of Scottish birth.
Some day I hope to be able to throw
a little light on Mrs. Gainsborough's
relations with her kinsfolk. 000
The portrait on one canvas of Gains-
borough’s two daughters holding a cat
whose outline is just discernible, must
have been painted about 1758-9, when
Mary (the little child in the group) was ten
or eleven. It belongs to the end of the
Suffolk period, near the time when Gains-
borough was planning his removal to Bath.
This portrait of the two sisters, which,
as I have said, has been acquired for the
National Gallery, is altogether different in
scale and treatment from the group.
Approximately life-size, it is painted with
the freedom and decision of an artist whose
work is a pleasure to him, and yet has
something of that pathos common to all
Gainsborough’s portraits of his daughters
when children. He was fond of painting
them together, hand-in-hand ; and hand-
in-hand they passed through life, never
separated except during Mary’s brief
experience of matrimony. And we have
learnt recently that they lie in the same
grave. 000000
When I was writing my life of Gains-
borough, I tried in vain to find their burial
place, which remained unidentified until
last year, when Mrs. Poole, the author of
66
the Oxford Catalogue of Portraits, and the
wife of Mr. Reginald Lane Poole, Keeper
of the Archives of Oxford University,
suggested that I should search the church-
yard at Hanwell. Mr. Poole is a descendant
of Gainsborough’s sister, Mrs. Gardiner,
and Mrs. Poole had found in some old
family papers a reference to Mary which
suggested that Hanwell was her place of
burial. And there I found the grave,
with inscriptions on the stone showing
not only that it covered the remains of both
sisters, but that every modern biographer
of Gainsborough, myself included, had
wrongly described Margaret as the elder.
According to the tombstone, and the church
register, Margaret, born in 1752, was four
years younger than Mary, who was born
in 1748. Margaret died in 1820, and Mary,
after being imbecile for many years, in
1826. The mistake about the relative ages
of the sisters originated in a statement by
Philip Thicknesse in his sketch of Gains-
borough’s life, published in 1788.^ 0
The pastoral, Rural Courtship, a com-
paratively early work, is an attractive
picture, of the kind that Gainsborough
loved best to paint, and of which he
produced many, both at Ipswich and Bath,
that have now disappeared. 000
Some of them were for that mysterious
early patron of Gainsborough, Panton
Betew, who must have known the artist
very well and, no doubt, could have told
us much that was interesting about the
early period of his life in London of which
our information is painfully scanty. And
of Betew himself we have little knowledge,
except that he was a kind of amateur
dealer who bought studies and sketches of
Gainsborough when he was a boy, and in
later years acquired from him important
pastorals of the type of the Rural Courtship,
but different in composition, several of
which were engraved. We know, too, from
the list Sir George Armytage published of
the weddings at the notorious Mayfair
Chapel, that Betew was married there in
17 54. It is not impossible that Gainsborough,
who had been married at the same place in
July, 1746, recommended the chapel to
his friend. Mayfair Chapel, it is worth
mentioning here, was also the scene of the
marriage of that great eighteenth century
craftsman, Thomas Chippendale. 0 0