Gainsborough and the Elegance of Another Age

Mrs. Sheridan by Thomas Gainsborough 

At long last, I finally made it to Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture at The Frick Collection in New York City. No photographs were allowed, so I am left gleaning images from the web. Even so, the memory remains vivid: silk, satin, powdered faces, embroidered coats—all rendered with the unmistakable grace and fluid brushwork of Thomas Gainsborough.

The exhibition explores portraiture within the world of eighteenth-century British fashion, where appearance reflected status, cultivation, and social ambition. Gainsborough understood this instinctively. Dress in his paintings is never mere decoration; it becomes part of the sitter’s identity. Yet despite the exhibition’s emphasis on fashion, I found myself equally captivated by his landscapes and backgrounds. The distant woods, fading skies, and gently receding countryside possess a poetic atmosphere that often rivals the figures themselves. Even within formal portraiture, one feels Gainsborough’s attachment to the natural world.

(L-R) Mary, Countess Howe; Captain Augustus John Hervey, Later, the 3rd
Earl of Bristol; and The Hon. Frances Duncombe by Thomas Gainsborough

Among my favorites were the monumental canvases Mary, Countess Howe (1763–64), Captain Augustus John Hervey, Later 3rd Earl of Bristol (ca. 1768), and The Hon. Frances Duncombe (ca. 1777). Their scale gives them grandeur, yet the paintings never feel stiff or ceremonial. Gainsborough fills them with motion, light, and air, allowing the subjects to appear animated rather than posed.

My absolute favorite was the haunting Mrs. Sheridan (probably 1783, altered between 1785 and 1787). The portrait has an almost dreamlike quality: the pale face emerging softly from shadow, the restrained elegance, the sense of melancholy held just beneath the surface. Like several works in the exhibition, it lingered in my mind long after leaving the gallery, though with a particular intensity difficult to describe.

Afterward, we spent time wandering through the Frick’s extraordinary permanent collection, which remains one of the great treasures of Manhattan. To move from Gainsborough into rooms containing works by Johannes Vermeer, Titian, Paolo Veronese, Francisco Goya, J. M. W. Turner, Anthony van Dyck, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Diego Velázquez, and El Greco is a reminder of how remarkable the collection truly is. And as always, I found myself drawn back to the landscapes of Camille Corot, which remain among my favorite paintings anywhere in the city.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, May 17th, The Feasts of Santa Restituta and San Pasquale Baylon