Gainsborough’s gritty, complicated existence, which included high expenditure of time hors concours with musicians and thespians, sharpened his speed of execution, but led him also into delays in completion and delivery. Rising prices only stimulated patrons in that affluent age, so the trick never worked for long. For commercial he was: his portraits were painted for a market, and the only way he had to regulate demand when it surged (apart from being rude to sitters) was to put up his prices conversely, when business was slack he painted his family and friends. Printmakers excepted, Gainsborough was, as Belsey amply demonstrates, the most prolific high-end commercial artist of the 18th century, with Reynolds his only rival. If these have been the tip, Hugh Belsey’s superlative catalogue of Gainsborough’s portraits is the whole of the iceberg. There has been a lot of Gainsborough about recently, notably the three exhibitions that ran concurrently in Bath, in Sudbury and at the National Portrait Gallery.
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