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Mr and Mrs Andrews
Thomas Gainsborough · Rococo & Neoclassicism
- Artist
- Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788)
- Date
- c. 1750
- Dimensions
- 69.8 x 119.4 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- National Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Mr and Mrs Andrews is an early portrait by Thomas Gainsborough of a newly married young couple, Robert and Frances Andrews, posed under an oak tree on their estate in Suffolk. Behind them stretches a wide view of their fields and farmland.
A closer look
The painting is both a portrait and a landscape, and the land is as much its subject as the people. Robert leans casually against a bench with his gun and hunting dog; Frances sits stiffly in a fashionable blue silk dress. The neat rows of wheat, the sheep in their enclosure and the church tower in the distance show the modern, well-managed farm that their marriage brought together. A patch on Frances’s lap was left unpainted, perhaps for a bird or a book that was never added.
