Mrs Kilderbee, née Mary Wayth (1723–1811)

Mrs Kilderbee, née Mary Wayth, painted around 1760 and at the Colchester and Ipswich Museums, depicts the wife of Gainsborough's closest Suffolk friend — Samuel Kilderbee, town clerk of Ipswich, whose friendship was one of the most important personal relationships of Gainsborough's professional life. The portrait's informality reflects the freedom that personal acquaintance gave Gainsborough: where commissioned portraits required a degree of social performance from both painter and sitter, the portrait of a friend's wife allowed for the relaxed observation of someone known through ordinary social contact rather than studio formality. Samuel Kilderbee appears in a separate portrait from around 1750 that shows the young Gainsborough's most intimate personal observation, and his wife's later portrait continues this family documentation. The Kilderbee friendship sustained Gainsborough through the difficult period of establishing himself in Ipswich, and his letters to Samuel show the warmth and wit of a genuine personal attachment unusual in the more formal world of professional portrait relationships. Mary Wayth Kilderbee's portrait thus preserves not merely an individual but a social bond that was central to Gainsborough's personal formation.

The portrait of a friend's wife brings out Gainsborough's most natural and affectionate handling. The face is painted with warm, unforced sympathy, the overall treatment relaxed and intimate rather than formally posed. The handling shows the transition between his careful Ipswich manner and the freer style developing under Bath's influence.