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Thomas Gainsborough, RA (British, 1727-1788)Portrait said to be of a member of the Seton family in a green dress, circa 1743oil on canvas36 x 24.75 cmProvenance: By descent (according to Sotheby's and Hugh Belsey);Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s Colonnade, 11th October 1995, lot 342, repr. col, as ‘Circle of Charles Phillips' and of a Miss Seton; Anonymous sale, Wooley and Wallis, Salisbury, 23th September 2015, lot 346, repr. col., as ‘Circle of Arthur Devis’, when acquired by the present ownerFootnote:Literature:Hugh Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough: The Portraits, Fancy Pictures and Copies after Old Masters, 2 volumes, New Haven and London 2019, pp. 901–2, cat. no. 975, repr. col.It is only in recent years that Thomas Gainsborough’s earliest portraits have been identified. The artist’s acute observation and his extraordinary ability to paint fabrics are telltale traits and this small portrait of a young woman from the Seton family is amongst the very earliest painted by Gainsborough. At the time he was aged about sixteen and lodging in Hatton Garden. He learnt by example at the St Martin’s Lane Academy, where William Hogarth had invited the Frenchman, Hubert-François Gravelot, to teach drawing, and in the studio of Francis Hayman, who was then engaged painting canvases to decorate a large number of supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens. Even at this early age Gainsborough was able to produce portraits with presence and sensitivity. It has not been possible to establish the precise identity of the sitter – though the Sotheby’s 1995 sale (see Provenance) states her to be a Miss Seton - she probably lived in London rather than the artist’s native Suffolk. She is stylishly dressed with drop pearl earrings and lace decorating the neckline of her dress and her over-ear cap. She adopts a standard pose, her head turned towards the beholder and in her right hand she holds a white glove. The sitter’s fingernails show through the fine fabric of the glove. The simmering qualities of her silk robe à la française are brilliantly shown in the detail at her elbow, in the fine lawn cuffs and in the scarf tucked into her stomacher. The artist took some trouble to complete the painting as he initially gave her a necklace which he painted out no doubt thinking that it detracted from the vertical emphasis of the stomacher and robings of her dress, and at some point the canvas was reduced at the bottom and on the left. The standard catalogue of the artist’s work lists a couple of earlier paintings, a miniature portrait of a young girl striking a very similar pose, who has the same heart-shaped face and carefully delineated features and a self-portrait painted in the artist’s early teens that was offered at Cheffins last year (21st April 2021, lot 42, sold for £90,000). Dr Brian Allen was the first authority to attribute the canvas to Gainsborough. In scale and form it is close to the self-portrait that is thought to date a couple of years earlier. The Seton portrait can be placed between the teenaged self-portrait and the fragmentary portrait of a boy and girl that is now at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury. We are grateful to Hugh Belsey for compiling this catalogue note.Condition report:Framed 47 x 35.3cmThe painting is executed in oil on a canvas support which has been lined. The canvas tension is good and the picture is in plane. The lining has slightly softened areas of impasto but overall the paint layers are in a good, stable condition. A damage to the sitter’s left arm has been repaired and overpainted. There are areas of overpaint across the surface which are finely applied and well matched to the original. The varnish is clear, even and semi-glossy

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