Regent's University London Library
& Media Services Catalogue

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This book, and the major exhibition it accompanies, features a dozen portraits of Gainsborough's daughters Mary and Margaret, the same number of himself and his wife Margaret, as well as works depicting four of his five siblings, his handsome nephew Gainsborough Dupont, an aunt and uncle, several in-laws and his beloved dogs, Tristram and Fox. Spanning more than four decades, Gainsborough’s family portraits chart the period from the mid - 1740s, when he plied his trade in his native Suffolk , through his time in Bath ( 1758–74 ), when he established himself with a rich and fashionable clientele , to his most successful latter years at his luxuriously appointed studio in London’s West End. Alongside this story of a provincial 18th century artist’s rise to fame and fortune runs a more private narrative, about the role of portraiture in the promotion of family values, at a time when these were assuming a recognisably modern form."