Mrs. Thomas Gainsborough, nee Margaret Burr

Margaret Burr was the illegitimate daughter of a duke, and she came to her marriage in 1746 with an annuity of £200 a year, enough on its own to keep a household. Gainsborough was 19 and had almost no practice. That money paid for the years it took him to build one. By 1778, when he painted this, they were installed in Schomberg House on Pall Mall, he was painting the royal family, and she ran the business, keeping the accounts and managing the sitters. She was about 50, and the portrait may have been made for that birthday. He put her in a black lace mantle looking straight out at him, a directness unusual in portraits of the day. Schomberg House was also his showroom, so clients who came to sit could compare the picture with the woman running the house around them.