Category: Artists

The portraits of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) made him perhaps the most famous British artist of the late eighteenth century. Nobles, statesmen, musicians and the range of men and women of the period’s merchant class all sat for him. But it is his portraits of notorious society women—widely considered among the greatest of the Western tradition—which attracted the most attention.

Eighteenth-century viewers appreciated these paintings differently than we do today. In his own time, Gainsborough’s portraits of actresses, performers and courtesans were seen as unconventional, if not radical, not only because of the type of woman they portrayed but also because of the unconventional way they were painted.

“These stunning portraits not only give us a perspective on the history of celebrity, but also on the history of women and of painting. These are provocative women provocatively painted,” explains exhibition curator Benedict Leca.

Organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum in association with the San Diego Museum of Art, Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman is the first exhibition devoted to Thomas Gainsborough’s feminine portraiture, and the first to focus specifically on modernity and femininity in Georgian England from the perspective of Gainsborough’s groundbreaking portraits of women.

Coinciding with the comprehensive cleaning and restoration of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s iconic Ann Ford (Mrs. Thicknesse), this exhibition unites a choice selection of thirteen paintings from renowned museum collections in the United States and Britain to illuminate the role that Gainsborough’s extraordinary portraiture played in defining new, progressive feminine identities.

 Among others on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum, September 18, 2010 – January 2, 2011 will be Mrs. Siddons (National Gallery, London), Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan (National Gallery, Washington), Giovanna Baccelli (Tate Britain), Grace Dalrymple (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Viscountess Ligonier (Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens).

The exhibition will also feature a small selection of period dresses from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s rich fashion arts and textile collection, thereby further contextualizing Gainsborough’s portraits while affording visitors a view of the material accessories of the “modern woman.”

If Gainsborough’s portraits help us to rethink the place of women in the eighteenth century, they also ask us to look anew at the formal specifics that made his portraits so important to ambitious women and their self-definition in the celebrity culture of the period. In his use of provocative postures and slashing brushwork, Gainsborough’s portraits of notorious women differed from those of his peers: they were the way he asserted his own place as the premier painter of modern life.

 In the eighteenth century, portraits were part of an active negotiation of social and gender relations, and the exhibition’s thesis is that a special complicity between artist and sitter formed the basis from which both conspired to upend traditional portraiture and calcified gender roles.

The exhibition was conceived by Benedict Leca, the Cincinnati Art Museum’s curator of European paintings, sculpture and drawings. Additional curatorial support for the exhibition’s presentation in San Diego has been provided by John Marciari, curator of European art, and Scot Jaffe, associate director for exhibitions and collections.

After premiering in Cincinnati this fall (September 18, 2010 – January 2, 2011) the exhibition will travel to the San Diego Museum of Art, where it will be on view from January 29, 2011 – May 1, 2011. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated, full-color catalog published by D Giles Limited, London, featuring essays by Benedict Leca, renowned costume historian Aileen Ribeiro, and art historian Amber Ludwig of Boston University. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.

Thomas Gainsborough’s painting, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was auctioned in London, England, nearly 100 years after it disappeared into obscurity. The portrait of Georgiana Spencer, an ancestor of Princess Diana, sold for 10,000 guineas, the highest price ever paid for a work of art up until that time.

However, the auction price it fetched is not the portrait’s greatest claim to fame. The portrait was painted circa 1785 as a whole length portrait by Thomas Gainsborough (1728-1788) and titled Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. In the 1830’s, its owner, an elderly schoolmistress named Miss Anne Maginnis, cut it down to fit over her fireplace. In 1841 she sold it to a picture dealer, John Bentley, for 56 pounds, who later gave it to his friend the collector Wynn Ellis. Ellis died in 1875 and part of his collection went for sale at Christie’s. It was bought by William Agnew, the Bond Street dealer, for 10,000 guineas.

On May 26, 1876, the picture was cut from its stretcher during the night and stolen by an international crook, Adam Worth, alias Harry Raymond. Adam Worth, whom Scotland Yard later called the “Napoleon of Crime,” and upon whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle eventually based Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis Dr. Moriarty, stole the artwork in order to come up with the bail to release his brother from jail. However, his brother was freed without his help, so Worth decided to keep the painting, even in the face of serious consequences.

Adam Worth was perhaps the 19th century’s most masterful criminal. Born in Germany but raised in the United States, Worth joined the Union Army in the Civil War. After erroneously being reported killed in the Second Battle of Bull Run, he spent the rest of the war hopping from one regiment to another, collecting money to join and then immediately deserting. After the war, he made his way to New York, where he joined a gang of pickpockets.

A conviction for robbery resulted in a three-year sentence at Sing Sing Prison. However, Worth escaped after only a few weeks and vowed to be more careful in the future. Using the alias Henry Raymond, Worth took up a lucrative career robbing banks before moving his criminal exploits to Europe. With perfectly planned heists and a consistent forgery operation, Worth avoided all violent encounters and established himself in respectable society.

Yet the theft of the Duchess of Devonshire led to his eventual downfall. His co-conspirators, Joe Elliot and Junka Phillips, were angered by the fact that they weren’t financially rewarded for stealing the valuable painting. When Worth refused to divulge its whereabouts, Elliot and Phillips went to the police and Worth was sent to prison, albeit on other charges. Following his release four years later in 1897, Worth returned to America. After a change of heart, he began negotiations with the Pinkerton Detective Agency for the ransom of the painting.

The Duchess of Devonshire was finally returned to England in 1901. J. P. Morgan, Wall Street’s biggest financier, promptly made the journey to obtain the painting for himself. He purportedly paid as much as $150,000 for it. Worth, who had received relatively little for his ransom, died a year later, penniless.

The picture remained in Morgan’s family until on July 13, 1994, when the Chatsworth House Trust in the U.K. bought the portrait at Sotheby’s. By a strange and winding path, the Gainsborough portrait ended up where it had always belonged — at Chatsworth.