Portrait of Richard Lowndes (c.1707-1775)
Thomas Gainsborough·1759
Historical Context
Gainsborough's Portrait of Richard Lowndes of around 1759 depicts a member of the Buckinghamshire Lowndes family — established landowners and MPs — with the formal directness of his Bath period male portraiture. The Lowndes family were significant figures in the Whig political world of the mid-eighteenth century, and the portrait creates the appropriate image of landed authority and civic responsibility appropriate to a man of established social position.
Technical Analysis
The male portrait is handled with typical Gainsborough directness, the face warmly modelled against a dark background. The costume is treated with efficient brushwork, reflecting Gainsborough's established formula for male country gentry — honest, dignified, and free from unnecessary embellishment.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the efficient brushwork: Gainsborough's standard formula for male country gentry — honest, dignified, and free from unnecessary embellishment.
- ◆Look at the warm face treatment against the dark background: this basic Gainsborough portrait structure concentrates the viewer's attention on character.
- ◆Observe the formal directness: the face rendered with honest observation rather than flattery, the costume with practiced economy.
- ◆Find the political context: the Lowndes family's Whig political connections place this portrait in the social world of mid-eighteenth-century Georgian England that Gainsborough documented so comprehensively.
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