Gertrude (1731–1807), Lady Alston

Gertrude, Lady Alston, painted around 1767 and at Gainsborough's House, belongs to the fully mature Bath period when Gainsborough's female portrait style had achieved its characteristic synthesis of Flemish grandeur and personal naturalism. Lady Alston was connected to the Hertfordshire gentry, part of the broad network of county families whose women formed the most celebrated part of Gainsborough's clientele. The portrait's large scale — implied by its full-length or near-full-length format — and the landscape setting that frames the sitter belong to the Van Dyck tradition of aristocratic portraiture that Gainsborough was absorbing in Bath through direct study of major collections. He had access to Wilton House's Van Dyck collection near Bath and drew from those fluid, atmospheric female portraits a lesson about how to combine formal grandeur with natural ease that Reynolds's more deliberate classicism could not match. The feathery brushwork of Lady Alston's dress, the cool silvery color of her complexion, and the easy grace of her pose together constitute what Gainsborough's contemporaries recognized as his distinctive contribution to the British portrait tradition: a female ideal at once more naturalistic and more poetic than Reynolds's historical grandeur.

Gainsborough's mature Bath handling is fully evident, with fluid brushwork creating an impression of relaxed elegance. The costume is treated with long, confident strokes that suggest rather than describe the fabric, while the face is modelled with the warm luminosity that made Gainsborough's female portraits so admired.