To be held on Tuesday, 16 April 2024
(NB: please note change to our usual day)
Mary Gainsborough (known to her parents as Molly) and her slightly younger sister Margaret (‘the Captain’) were sketched and painted more often than most girls of their time and class. The images of the talented sisters and their affectionate father’s letters give an exceptional chronicle of two young women growing up in mid-Georgian England. Through their father’s sensitive portraits of Mary, Margaret and their family (and a few of their pets), this lecture will follow their story from childhood in Suffolk, to the ‘tea-drinkings, dancings, husband-huntings’ of Bath and the difficulties of adult life, keeping up appearances in London.
Francesco Bartolozzi (1728–1815) after Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Stipple engraving and etching, 1798
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Unknown British Artist:
The Painter’s Daughter Mary (1750–1826), copy after Thomas Gainsborough
Oil on canvas, mid-19th century
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788)
Susanna Gardiner, the artist’s niece (1752-1818)
Oil on canvas, c.1758-59
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Amina Wright
Amina Wright is a curator with an impressive background in historic art collections and exhibitions. She specialises in Eighteenth century British art and old master paintings. She is the senior curator for the new Faith Museum at Auckland Castle in County Durham. She has also worked for the National Trust, English Heritage at Kenwood House and the Holburne Museum in Bath. Her publications include. “Joseph Wright of Derby: Bath and Beyond” and “Thomas Lawrence: Coming of Age”.
She also has an MA in Christianity and the Arts.