Peter Darnell Muilman, Charles Crokatt, and William Keable

Group portraits of small-scale figures, called conversation pieces, were a popular type of portraiture in Britain from the 1720s to the 1750s. This conversation piece was likely painted soon after the twenty-one-year-old Gainsborough returned to his hometown of Sudbury from apprenticeship and early work in London. It depicts Peter Darnell Muilman (1730–1766) and Charles Crokatt (1730–1769), sons of wealthy immigrant families from the Netherlands and the United States, and William Keable (?1714–1774), a local Suffolk painter and musician who may have been their drawing or music teacher. The central figure is certainly the artist Keable. He lacks the gold trim on his coat, the powdered wig, and gold tricorn decoration worn by the other two, who must be Muilman and Crokatt. Keable blows into his flute, slightly distorting his mouth in a way that would be inappropriate for portraits of landed gentry like Muilman and Crokatt. Why Gainsborough painted them together is unknown.