- Gainsborough (1727-1788), Thomas
- Study for a Portrait of Ann Ford
- c.1760
- Drawing
- Black and white chalks with stump on blue laid paper
- 30.5x23 cm
- Inv. Nr. 2001.164
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This study for Gainsborough’s portrait of Ann Ford marks a significant turning point in his career. Produced in around 1760, just after Gainsborough had moved to the prosperous spa town of Bath, it demonstrates his increasingly inventive approach to full-length portraiture at this time. His sitter, Anne Ford, was a talented musician whose unconventional private life attracted considerable attention. Her rejection of social norms made her a popular topic of conversation and gossip. Gainsborough clearly hoped to capitalise on her celebrity: contemporary accounts record the finished portrait being exhibited in his 'Shew Rooms' opposite the west end of Bath Abbey. The painting is today in the collection of the Cincinatti Art Museum (Accession number 1927.396).
The importance that Gainsborough attached to the public display of the painting may account for his careful compositional sketches in which he worked out the complex and unusual pose. In this, the earliest study, he pays particular attention to the fall of the drapery and the folds of lace. The sumptuous fabric of the sitter’s dress is a striking and prominent feature in the final portrait, and Gainsborough clearly had this in mind from an early stage. The later study, which is in the collection of the British Museum (Museum number 1894,0612.11), is more highly finished. It exhibits denser sketching in graphite and also has the addition of watercolour. It prefigures the final composition, in which the sitter leans on her elbow, with her instrument resting on her lap. - Purchased with a grants from the National Art Collections Fund, an anonymous donation given through the National Art Collections Fund and the Gainsborough's House Society Development Trust and Re:source/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, December 2001
