Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780)

Gainsborough's Sir William Blackstone of around 1758 depicts the great English jurist whose Commentaries on the Laws of England became the foundational text of Anglo-American common law, creating the most influential legal treatise in the English language. Blackstone's portrait was painted before the publication of the Commentaries (1765-1769) that would make him the most important legal scholar in the English-speaking world, capturing him as a practicing lawyer and academic rather than the internationally celebrated authority he would become.

Gainsborough renders the lawyer-scholar with the intellectual gravity appropriate to one of the most influential legal minds of the century. The academic robes are treated with careful precision, while the face conveys the analytical intelligence that produced the most important work of legal scholarship in the English language.