Portrait of Joshua Kirby (1716-1774)

Gainsborough's portrait of Joshua Kirby from around 1754-56 depicts his close friend and fellow Suffolk-born artist who was a perspective teacher, architectural theorist, and later instructor in perspective to the young George III. The friendship between Gainsborough and Kirby — both working in the provincial world of Ipswich before establishing themselves in London or Bath — was one of the more important artistic friendships of mid-eighteenth-century Britain, and this portrait documents it with the warmth and informality characteristic of Gainsborough's portraits of personal friends. Kirby's own work on perspective theory, published in 1754 with Hogarth's engraved frontispiece, shows the intellectual world both artists inhabited, and Gainsborough's portrait catches him in the easy confidence of a man at the beginning of a distinguished career.

The intimate portrait shows Gainsborough's early style at its most sympathetic, with careful facial modeling that conveys warmth and intelligence. The relatively tight handling reflects the Ipswich period manner, before the more fluid brushwork of his Bath and London years.