Margaret Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88)
Margaret Gainsborough, ca. 1778
Oil on canvas
30 15/16 x 25 1/8 in. (76.8 x 63.8 cm)
The Courtauld Gallery, London; Samuel Courtauld Trust
Image © The Courtauld/Bridgeman Images
Gainsborough married Margaret Burr (1728–1798), the illegitimate daughter of the 3rd Duke of Beaufort, in 1746. The £200 annuity she received from her father's estate helped support the couple's young family early in Gainsborough's career, though being born out of wedlock did nothing to elevate her husband's modest social standing. Gainsborough painted an unusually high number—about thirty—of family portraits that include their daughters, siblings, nephews, and nieces. Reportedly, he painted his wife annually to mark their wedding anniversary. Encircled by a black lace mantle, Margaret was about fifty when she sat for this portrait that, in its intimacy and sympathetic depiction, gives a sense of the artist's affection for his wife after three decades of marriage, not all of them easy. Gainsborough's family portraits would have hung in his showrooms and may have served to present options from which potential clients could choose.
Transcript
Speaker: Aimee Ng
Gainsborough and his wife were teenagers when they married in 1746. Their first child died as a toddler. His wife, Margaret, was the illegitimate daughter of the 3rd Duke of Beaufort, and an annual inheritance from her father’s estate helped support their young family as Gainsborough struggled financially. Her illegitimate birth, even if to a duke, did not help to elevate their social standing, though, reportedly, once accused of dressing above her station, she declared that she was “a prince’s daughter.” Along with disparaging remarks Gainsborough made about his “gentlemen” clients being only good for their money, such anecdotes suggest a tension in the Gainsboroughs’ lives around the status they strived to attain, his subordinate relationship to his clients, and the unrecognized nobility into which Margaret had been born. His many portraits of his family, like this one, suggest that he and his wife saw themselves as people of fashion; he pictured them no differently than paying clientele.
Encircled in a black lace mantel, Margaret was about fifty years old when she sat for this portrait. In its intimacy and sympathetic depiction, it gives a sense of the artist’s affection for his wife after three decades of marriage, not all of them easy. He would not have made money from family portraits, but he may have hung them in his showrooms to show examples of his work and offer clients options for their own portraits.