The Artist’s Daughter Mary

The Artist's Daughter Mary, painted around 1777 in London and held at the National Gallery, depicts Mary Gainsborough as a young adult — she was born in 1748 — in one of the series of portraits Gainsborough made of his daughters throughout their lives. The Gainsborough daughter portraits collectively constitute one of British art's most sustained exercises in private, personal portraiture: works made not for sale or commission but for the artist's own emotional purposes, and consequently freed from the social conventions and flattery considerations that shaped commissioned portraiture. By 1777 both Mary and her sister Margaret were exhibiting signs of the mental instability that would eventually require their institutionalization, and the tenderness Gainsborough brought to this portrait of Mary takes on retrospective poignancy. The National Gallery holds the work alongside its other major Gainsborough portraits, where the difference in emotional register between this private commission and the formal society portraits is immediately apparent.

Gainsborough renders his daughter with the warmth and intimacy of genuine affection, using soft handling and a delicate palette. The portrait's informal quality and emotional directness contrast with the polished elegance of his society commissions.