Mrs. Thomas Mathews

Diana Jones grew up at Fonmon Castle, her family's house in the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales, and in November 1763 she married Thomas Mathews. A few years later the couple moved to Bath, and Gainsborough painted them both, this portrait of her and a companion of her husband. Thomas Mathews died in 1820. Diana went home to Fonmon to live with her brother's family, and she took her paintings with her. She died two years later, and the two portraits stayed on at Fonmon. They remained with the Jones family for a whole century, until 1923, when R. O. Jones sold them to Howard Young Galleries, dealers in New York and London. By the next year they belonged to Robert J. Edwards, a Boston collector, who died in 1924 and left them to the Museum of Fine Arts. Husband and wife crossed the Atlantic as a pair and entered the museum on the same day, in April 1925.