Anne Pleydell
Thomas Gainsborough
(English, 1727–1788)
about 1765
Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas
Dimensions126.4 x 104.8 cm (49 3/4 x 41 1/4 in.)
Credit LineRobert Dawson Evans Collection
Accession number17.3266
On View
On viewClassificationsPaintings
Collections
Mr. and Mrs. Pleydell lived in a large country house in Dorset, southwest of London. Gainsborough painted them when he lived in Bath, and his skill at balancing artistic imagination with observed truth is extremely well represented in these portrayals. The pose of Mrs. Pleydell is ultimately derived from a figure in the seventeenth-century painter Anthony van Dyck’s great group portrait of the Pembroke family, but the shimmering blue underskirt and voluminous pink dress, with its frothy lace accents, illustrate Gainsborough’s awareness of and ability to depict contemporary fashion.
ProvenanceMid 1760s, Anne Luttrell (Mrs. Edmund Morton Pleydell) (b. 1731 - d. 1819), Milborne St. Andrew, Dorset (original commission); by descent within the family to Col. Edmund Morton Mansel-Pleydell (b. 1850 - d. 1914), Whatcombe, Dorset; sold by Mansel-Pleydell to Arthur J. Sulley and Co., London [see note 1]; sold by Sulley to Blakeslee Galleries, New York; 1909, sold by Blakeslee to Robert Dawson Evans (b. 1843 - d. 1909) and his wife, Maria Antoinette Hunt Evans (b. 1845 - d. 1917), Boston; 1917, bequest of Mrs. Robert Dawson Evans to the MFA. (Accession Date: November 1, 1917)
NOTES:
[1] According to a letter from T.J. Blakeslee to Mr. Evans (May 27, 1909).
NOTES:
[1] According to a letter from T.J. Blakeslee to Mr. Evans (May 27, 1909).
Gainsborough Dupont
