British Portraiture
This room focuses particularly on one of the great masters of
18th-century painting in Britain, Sir Thomas Gainsborough. He
is best known for his portraits despite his longing to devote
himself to painting ‘landskips’ as he called them. After he moved
to Bath in 1759, Gainsborough began to paint members of high
society, which this room testifies to. Flanking the doorway
to Bourgeois and Desenfans’s mausoleum, hang two magnificent
full-scale portraits of the Linley Sisters and Mrs Elizabeth
Moody and her two Sons. Among other works, this room
also displays portraits of eminent sitters by British artists such
as Tilly Kettle and Thomas Hudson, both of whom were working at the
same time as Gainsborough.