Portrait de James Christie (1730-1803)

Gainsborough had not long moved to London, taking rooms on Pall Mall almost next door to the saleroom of his friend James Christie, who had opened his auction house a few years earlier and was building the firm that still carries his name. The two men helped each other. Christie lent his walls to show pictures, Gainsborough sent buyers his way. Here the auctioneer leans one elbow, with easy confidence, on a landscape, and the landscape is one of Gainsborough's own, a quiet advertisement for them both. Christie holds a sheet of paper, perhaps a sale list. He is dressed plainly in brown, a man whose living was made talking other people into parting with their money.