Some of you may know that one of our great 18th century portrait and landscape painters, Thomas Gainsborough, lived and worked in Bath for fifteen years.
A unique family collection of four of his works has just been successfully acquired by Bath Preservation Trust under the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. It’s a provision in British tax law under which inheritance tax debts can be written off in exchange for the acquisition of objects of national importance.
The portraits will go on display for the first time as part of Being There, the inaugural show of the relaunched exhibitions programme in The Gallery at No.1 Royal Crescent, running from 14 September 2024 until 23 February 2025.
It is rare for such family groups of paintings to remain together and especially by such an exceptional artist as Gainsborough. They depict four members of the Tugwell family from provincial Bradford on Avon. Clothier Humphrey Tugwell, his wife Elizabeth and their sons William and Thomas, all were painted some three years after Gainsborough established himself in nearby Bath. The portraits have until now remained with the sitters’ descendants and never been sold. The set is received as part of the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, administered by Arts Council England.
The four Gainsborough paintings will be presented as key components of a kaleidoscopic group exhibition of portraiture featuring 18 contemporary British artists (including works by Paul Graham and Joy Labinjo) selected by guest curator Ingrid Swenson MBE. The title for the exhibition, Being There is intended to invite visitors to reflect on the experience of artists and their sitters or subject in the act of making the artwork, and to consider what similarities and differences there may be for the role of the artist in Gainsborough’s time and today.
A wonderful acquisition for Bath. It is to be hoped that after the exhibition they will go on permanent display in the city and not put into storage – which a large part of our art inheritance, unfortunately, is.
Is there provenance for these? Because, as they stand, they really don’t strike me as Gainsboroughs. I’m certainly not an art expert but I am hooked on Gainsborough and have looked at a lot of them. These really don’t do it for me – they seem too precise – Gainsborough was an impressionist long before the impressionists! Could they be by Gainsborough Dupont – Thomas’s nephew? He was also very fond of portraits in ovals, as some of these are. He would have been about the right age. Just a thought.
Further to the above – overnight I double-checked and realised (by looking at other accounts of the paintings) that I had misread the dates, so Gainsborough Dupont can safely be ruled out. However, comparing them with known Gainsborough paintings of the same date, they still do not appear right, in particular the one of Elizabeth Tugwell. The wonderful portrait of Ann Ford is 1760, and the lace on that is painted in a much more confident way. However, given the age of the paintings, they must be very dirty by now, and this may account for the curious skin tones. In addition, they may have had ill-advised repairs and touchings up. I wonder if the black lace on Elizabeth was added by another hand when she was widowed. I do hope that Bath Preservation Trust will carry out a full restoration and investigation in the style of Bendor Grosvenor’s Lost Masterpieces. Perhaps there really are some Gaisnboroughs lurking under these murky paintings. I hope so. At the moment they clearly need TLC. I know a catalogue raisonnée was published a few years ago – are they in that?
Interesting! Perhaps they can be compared to the Holburne Museum’s excellent collection of Gainsborough paintings.
This is definitely worthy of an episode of ‘Fake or Fortune’ !!