Susanna Gardiner

Thomas Gainsborough, between 1758 and 1759

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Artist: Thomas Gainsborough (British, 1727–1788)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 24 3/8 × 20 1/8 inches (61.9 × 51.1 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

In October 1758, Thomas Gainsborough left Ipswich for a six-month stay in Bath, hoping to find more work as a portrait painter. He quickly made a favorable impression. As one contemporary noted, “We have a Painter here who takes the most exact likenesses I ever yet saw.” Alongside commissions, Gainsborough was producing portraits of his immediate and extended family at this time, presumably intended as presents.

This sensitive portrait of a young girl must have been painted on his return to Suffolk, for the sitter is Gainsborough’s niece Susanna Gardiner. Her mother, Susan, was one of Gainsborough’s elder sisters and worked as a milliner in his home town of Sudbury. The sensitive handling of paint, which almost imitates pastel, and the subtle coloring reflect Gainsborough’s growing abilities as a painter and mark a departure from the small full-length portraits he had produced in Suffolk (one of which is shown nearby).

Text: Yale Center for British Art.