In mid-to-late 18th century England, if you wanted your portrait painted, there was one artist whose touch set him apart: Thomas Gainsborough.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can always kind of recognize a Gainsborough because there\u2019s this sinewy, sort of \u2014 it\u2019s been called the gossamer web of paint \u2014 that was, even in his own life, people were talking about how no one could paint like he could paint,\u201d said Aimee Ng, the Peter Jay Sharp chief curator at The Frick Collection and organizer of the exhibition \u201cGainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture.\u201d<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
\u201cGainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture\u201d is on view at The Frick Collection through May 25
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The exhibition features 25 portraits by Thomas Gainsborough, including 22 loans from 17 lenders in North America and the U.K.
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It is the first exhibition in New York devoted solely to Gainsborough\u2019s portraits and the Frick\u2019s first special show dedicated to the artist
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Visitors can also see five additional Gainsborough works in the museum\u2019s permanent collection galleries<\/p>\n
The new exhibition at the Upper East Side museum is the first devoted to Gainsborough\u2019s portraits in New York and the Frick\u2019s first special exhibition focused on the renowned British artist.<\/p>\n
On view through May 25, it brings together 25 works that explore the interplay between portraiture and fashion in 18th-century Britain.<\/p>\n
Of the 25 paintings featured, three are from the Frick\u2019s permanent collection. The rest were loaned for the exhibition.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty-two paintings are on loan from 17 lenders in North America and the U.K., and we are grateful to all of them,\u201d Ng said.<\/p>\n
Gainsborough\u2019s clientele ranged from royalty to relatives and friends. He painted the king and queen of England, along with his wife, his nephew and studio assistant, his friend\u2019s dogs, a Belgian inventor named Merlin, and Ignatius Sancho \u2014 a servant who was also a composer, writer and abolitionist.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s the only Black sitter that Gainsborough painted that we know of, and actually this is probably the only portrait of a servant by a major artist in the 18th century in Britain that we know of,\u201d Ng said. \u201cBut of course, Gainsborough was not showing him as a servant. He was showing Sancho as a gentleman.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibition situates these portraits within the context of 18th-century fashion, highlighting how fabric, texture and silhouette became tools of identity in Gainsborough\u2019s hands. Flowing gowns, tailored coats and shimmering fabrics are rendered with the same lightness that defined his brushwork.<\/p>\n
Visitors can also see five additional Gainsborough works in the museum\u2019s permanent collection galleries, located in the library and dining room of the former Gilded Age home of industrialist and art patron Henry Clay Frick.<\/p>\n
The mansion, between 70th and 71st streets on Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side, reopened last April after a years-long renovation.<\/p>\n
Beyond Gainsborough, the Frick houses works by masters such as Johannes Vermeer, Claude Monet, \u00c9douard Manet, Edgar Degas and Rembrandt.<\/p>\n