William Wollaston, MP

William Wollaston served as MP for Ipswich, the constituency in whose social world Gainsborough had built his career, making this 1759 portrait a work of particular local significance. The very large format — 215.9 by 147.3 centimeters — indicates a full-length or near-full-length commission of the kind that Gainsborough was increasingly receiving as he transitioned to Bath patronage while still maintaining Suffolk connections. Full-length portraiture was the highest-status format in the British portrait tradition, associated with Van Dyck's royal and aristocratic commissions and Reynolds's grand-manner ambitions; it commanded substantially higher fees than the bust or three-quarter-length portraits that constituted most of Gainsborough's early work. Wollaston's parliamentary status justified this ambitious scale, and Gainsborough's treatment shows him beginning to absorb Van Dyck's compositional lessons — the easy authority of the standing male figure, the relationship between the sitter and the landscape or architectural setting. The Holburne Museum's collection in Bath, where the portrait now hangs, creates a connection between the Suffolk politician and the city where Gainsborough's art would fully mature in the decade following this commission.

The portrait marks a stylistic turning point, with Gainsborough beginning to loosen his brushwork and develop the more fluid, atmospheric manner of his Bath period. The face is painted with greater breadth than his earlier Suffolk portraits, while the costume begins to be suggested rather than described.