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Mr and Mrs William Hallett ('The Morning Walk')
Thomas Gainsborough · Rococo & Neoclassicism
- Artist
- Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788)
- Date
- 1785
- Dimensions
- 236.2 x 179.1 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- National Gallery, London, United Kingdom
The Morning Walk is a wedding portrait of a young couple, William Hallett and Elizabeth Stephen, strolling arm in arm through a woodland, accompanied by a white Pomeranian dog who looks up at its mistress.
A closer look
Gainsborough painted the couple, both just twenty-one, with an airy lightness that makes them seem to float through the landscape. Elizabeth's gauzy white silk dress and the feathered hat, William's dark velvet suit, and the feathery trees are all painted with the same quick, flickering strokes, so that figures and nature merge into one harmonious whole. Rather than a stiff formal portrait, it captures a moment of elegant, unhurried happiness. The couple married in July 1785 and the portrait was painted soon after.
