David Garrick

David Garrick, painted around 1770 and held at the National Portrait Gallery, depicts the actor and theater manager who had transformed English theatrical culture by replacing the declamatory acting style of the early eighteenth century with a naturalistic, psychologically immediate manner that audiences found revolutionary. Garrick (1717-1779) was Gainsborough's friend as well as his sitter, and their relationship reflected the intersection of the visual arts and theater in Georgian London's cultural life. Gainsborough was himself deeply interested in music and theater — he was a fine amateur musician and a regular theatregoer — and his portraits of artists and performers have a quality of personal engagement that his more formal aristocratic commissions sometimes lack. The National Portrait Gallery holds multiple portraits of Garrick by different artists, but Gainsborough's version has always been regarded as the most psychologically penetrating — capturing the actor's intelligence and personal charisma rather than his theatrical persona.

Gainsborough renders Garrick with the warm informality and fluid brushwork that distinguish his approach from Reynolds's more intellectual manner. The portrait captures Garrick's lively personality through direct observation rather than allegorical enhancement.