William Wollaston (1730–1797)

The second William Wollaston in Gainsborough's oeuvre — this one of 1759, now at the Colchester and Ipswich Museums, representing perhaps a family member of the MP William Wollaston also painted that year — demonstrates the overlapping social network of Ipswich's professional and gentry families that provided Gainsborough with steady commissions. The larger scale of this work, at 127.5 by 100.3 centimeters, suggests a three-quarter-length portrait of similar ambition to the MP's full-length, possibly documenting another member of the extended Wollaston clan. The Wollaston family had distinguished scientific connections — Thomas Wollaston had been associated with the Royal Society in an earlier generation — and the portrait series suggests a family confident enough in its status to seek multiple likenesses from the same fashionable painter. Gainsborough's handling of the dark male coat against a landscape background is particularly interesting in this transitional period: he was working out how to solve the formal problem of the dark-toned male figure that Reynolds handled through classical postures and theatrical light, and Gainsborough's approach — direct natural observation rather than historical quotation — produces a different but equally compelling result.

Gainsborough distinguishes the younger Wollaston's portrait from his father's through a slightly more relaxed treatment suited to the sitter's youth. The handling shows the same transitional quality — between Suffolk precision and Bath fluency — that characterizes all of Gainsborough's work from this pivotal year.