Gainsborough Linley portraits

Elizabeth and Mary Linley were the most beautiful and talked-about young girls in Bath’s society  in the 1770s. From a musical family, they were applauded on the theatre stages of Bath and London, as much as they appeared in the newspapers of the day as society figures. They were portrayed together, in 1772, by Thomas Gainsborough, who was a close friend of their father’s, and their neighbour in Bath. The painter had seen Elizabeth and Mary grow before his eyes and tenderly represented them in their magnificent large canvas known as "The Linley Sisters", now at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London (United Kingdom).

In the same year as the Dulwich painting was finished by Gainsborough, Elizabeth eloped to France with the young playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, causing a great scandal. A year later, in 1773, the two were married. Elizabeth did not expect the marriage to be an unhappy one, constantly marked by Sheridan’s infidelities. Elizabeth gave up singing and supported her husband in his career as a writer and politician.

Gainsborough was to portray Elizabeth at different points in her life. This is his last image of her – aged thirty-one- only a few years before her untimely death of tuberculosis in 1792. Elizabeth sits under a tree in the open countryside – a windswept valley-. Elizabeth’s entire figure is transformed by the romantic wind in the canvas, just as passion swept her short life.

Date: until October 2.
Place: Dulwich Picture Gallery. Gallery Road, Dulwich. London. SE21 7AD. United Kingdom.
Opening hours: from Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm.  Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 5pm.   

The great masters are in artelista.com