Thomas Gainsborough: Mr and Mrs Andrews (1750)

Baroque was followed by the Rococo style which was lighter in its appearance and themes. Rococo frivolity was a reaction against the serious themes and styles of the Baroque. Rococo painters tended to depict the pleasurable pastimes of their wealthy patrons, striving for an elegance and lightness of tone in a rejection of the dark dramatics of the Baroque.

Gainsborough was not a typical Rococo artist and in many ways his work is more aligned with the Romantic movement. He painted many images of the elite at their pastimes, such as this one, but he included a veiled critique of the situation. 

Here we see two wealthy patrons being civilised and cultured. The man is in his gentleman’s hunting strides, with gun and dog. His very fashionable wife is writing a letter (possibly posed to allow the substitution of a baby at a later date). They are shown with a backdrop of their own land, with neat rows of wheat sheaves giving a receding depth to the composition... This shows us the rich how they want to see themselves. They did not harvest that wheat, but any peasant workers are conspicuous by their absence. The stormy sky also adds a sense of foreboding - an example of the ‘pathetic fallacy’ widely used by the Symbolists and Romantics, where the actual atmosphere of a scene reflects the emotional ‘atmosphere’ of the situation. Possibly a prophetic metaphor for approaching unrest and the coming period of revolution…

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Thomas Gainsborough: Countess Howe (1760)

Gainsborough had established himself as one of foremost portrait painters in England and had no shortage of commissions. His skill is evident here in the detailing of the lace and silk of the ostentatious dress, as well as the sensitivity of the face. Great care has been taken to pose the subject in a way that shows her elegance and also her fashion sense.

It was traditional to show the landed gentry in their grounds, but here the background appears quite wild, the tree looks wind-tugged and the sky is a stormy grey. This serves to counterpoint the luminous sheen of the silk though seems at odds with the widely fashionable ‘frothy’ lightness of the Rococo style. In this painting Gainsborough harks back to the dark backgrounds of the Baroque and so hints at the deeper symbolism that would be expected from the earlier fashion. There is a passing resemblance to some portraits of Queen Marie Antoinette of France, who was portrayed several times in an informal garden setting, seemingly luminous against a darker background. Perhaps, in this painting of an aristocrat, Gainsborough is telling the viewer that there is indeed a ‘a storm brewing’, foreshadowing the French Revolution of 1789.