The Fraud by Barbara Ewing

Author:Barbara Ewing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little Brown

Mr Thomas Gainsborough was the Portraitist everybody spoke of these days; he and Sir Joshua Reynolds were the fashionable Painters now, their names on people’s lips now; Mr Hartley Pond however disparaged Mr Gainsborough’s work, and his odd habit of dressing people in modern-day clothes.

‘His paintings will be out of Fashion in a year, mark my words!’ said Mr Hartley Pond. ‘He seems to know nothing at all of the History of Art: in Portraits clothes should be above fashion, timeless. Reynolds has the sense to often put his subjects in the eternal clothing of the Ancient Greeks - those Paintings will never age.’

But Mr Thomas Gainsborough, we knew, had moved to a house in Pall Mall: how could he not become one of our dinner guests?—He did not come often (it was said he was not much interested in his fellow Artists) but when he did come he added great gaiety to the table - amusing and full of life and full of drink - and I noticed that Mr Hartley Pond continued to attend, charmed as we all were.

‘Do you hear my ducks and my hens?’ Mr Gainsborough enquired of the di Vecellio family, his neighbours. ‘Do they disturb you?’

‘You keep such animals in your garden, Mr Gainsborough?’ Angelica asked him in surprise (she obviously had not acquainted herself with the crowing of the rooster).

‘In my garden, Signora, and indeed in my house when my Wife can be persuaded, for I prefer to draw them rather than people, that is the Truth of it!’ and we did not believe him, and we laughed. ‘I do also have pigs on occasion, but not regularly: my Wife will not abide pigs. It is only unfortunate that Nature does not sell,’ he added, ‘but I must of course make the pot boil!’ and dock leaves and nettles that he had picked by Millbank fell from his jacket, and I saw that Philip could not help liking him despite being jealous of his success, for it soon became abundantly clear that Mr Gainsborough (although he too of course was a Member of the Royal Academy) cared not a fig for the Art World, made his success in his own way.

And then one day I heard them speak of the two Woman Academicians that James Burke had told me of.

‘Tell me, how did women become Academicians?’ I asked the table in general. ‘And might there not soon be, therefore, Women students at the Royal Academy School?’ and if my brother looked at me I did not look at him.

Mr Gainsborough was there again that day, I remember, and he answered my questions in his usual gay manner. ‘One of the Woman Academicians is married to a Painter, Signorina. And the other has covered herself twice: she is the daughter of a Painter and she is -’ and he suddenly laughed, ‘let us say she is given very much attention by Sir Joshua Reynolds - and how else, for a Woman, after all?’ and

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