Mrs. Samuel Moody and her Sons, Samuel and Thomas

Gainsborough preferred to paint his sitters in contemporary dress rather than the classicizing or "timeless" costumes advised by Joshua Reynolds, even though contemporary dress went out of fashion and the portraits would eventually look outdated. Thus, Gainsborough occasionally repainted portraits, years later, to update fashions that had gone out of style (see, for example, Mrs. Sheridan). For this portrait of Elizabeth Moody (1756–1782), who died at age twenty-six from complications of tuberculosis, his changes were more substantial. He had originally painted Elizabeth, shortly after her marriage, alone and with her right arm raised to touch a pearl necklace. In the years after her death, at the request of her widower, Gainsborough augmented the portrait, removing the pearl necklace, moving her arms, and including her sons Samuel and Thomas, who had been infants when she passed away. Gainsborough transformed a fashionable portrait of a newlywed in a Turkish-style dress and modishly piled hair into a memorial image, visualizing a reunion of the boys with their late mother.