- Title:
- Portrait of the Artist's Daughter Mary
- Object name(s):
- Picture; British
- Brief description:
- This portrait of Gainsborough's older daughter Mary was produced in 1777 around the same time as a portrait made of his youngest, Margaret Gainsborough, holding a Theorbo (NG6687), which entered the National Gallery Collection in 2019. Unusually, the artist has inscribed the work with the name of the sitter and signed it, indicating the work is complete. These paintings of the two sisters were kept by the artist’s descendants throughout the nineteenth century, reflecting their importance to the family.Both portraits are notably unfinished, though Margaret’s is less finished than this painting of Mary, as are The Artist’s Daughters, chasing a Butterfly (NG1811) and The Artist’s Daughters, playing with a Cat (NG3812), also in the National Gallery Collection. The loose handling and experimentation adopted in all these works reflect the intimate relationship the artist held with each sitter. Together they demonstrate his distinctive approach to representing his family.This work also reflects Gainsborough’s knowledge of, and desire to emulate, paintings by great artists from previous generations. The painting to which the portrait of Mary alludes, is now known to be a painting by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) of his wife.
- Collection:
- National Gallery
- Credit line:
- Tate: Bequeathed by Sir Otto Beit 1945
- Current location:
- Room 34
- Dimension:
- Height
- Dimension measured part:
- Overall
- Dimension measurement unit:
- cm
- Dimension value:
- 77.50
- Dimension:
- Width
- Dimension measured part:
- Overall
- Dimension measurement unit:
- cm
- Dimension value:
- 64.80
- Inscription content:
- Dated and inscribed
- Material:
- Oil on canvas
- Object name:
- Picture; British
- Object production date:
- 1777
- Date - earliest / single:
- 1777
- Date - latest:
- 1777
- Object production date:
- Date - period:
- 1775-99
- Object production person:
- Thomas Gainsborough
- Person's birth date:
- 1727
- Person's death date:
- 1788
- Object production place:
- England
- Other number:
- L1352
- Other number type:
- object number
- Other number:
- 013B-000B-0000-0000
- Other number type:
- PID
- Other number:
- L1352
- Other number type:
- display number
- Other number:
- N05638
- Other number type:
- Lender Object Number
- Other number:
- l31352
- Other number type:
- sort number
- Responsible department/section:
- Main Collection
- Right note:
- To encourage the use and reuse of the National Gallery's collection data, they are released under the following dedications and licences: Structured data (as opposed to narrative texts) are released under a Creative Commons Zero dedication (CC0): https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Descriptions, notes and all other narrative text content are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 licence (CC BY-NC-ND): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Style:
- Georgian
Persistent shareable link for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/96e42586-825d-39b4-a8ae-626a64386dab
Use licence for this record: CC BY
Attribution for this record: https://museumdata.uk/objects/96e42586-825d-39b4-a8ae-626a64386dab, National Gallery, CC BY
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