Portrait of Margaret Gainsborough holding a Theorbo

Around 1777, a few years after moving to London, Gainsborough painted his younger daughter Margaret, then in her mid-twenties, plucking a theorbo, a large lute with an extra-long neck. The Gainsboroughs were keen amateur musicians, and Margaret was the most musical of them. The picture was long thought to show her elder sister Mary, who played the harpsichord, before scholars recognised the younger sister. Her hair is piled high and powdered in the fashion of the late 1770s, and she looks aside as she plays. It was probably painted for himself, with no client waiting, and he never finished it. That is why his method shows so plainly, bold dark outlines laid straight onto a reddish-brown ground, with the instrument and her arms still only roughed in.