Portrait of Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782)

Johann Christian Bach was the youngest son of Johann Sebastian, and unlike his father he left Germany, settled in London, and became the city's fashionable composer, the man who taught the young Mozart when the boy passed through. In London he grew close to Thomas Gainsborough. So when a portrait of him was wanted for an unusual collection in Bologna, where the music scholar Padre Martini was gathering likenesses of famous musicians, Bach turned to his painter friend rather than sit for a stranger. That is why an English portrait of a German composer has hung in Bologna ever since. Gainsborough gives him an easy, slightly amused look, caught in the quick feathery brushwork he saved for people he actually liked.