Il signor e la signora Andrews

Robert and Frances Andrews married in Sudbury in 1748. He was 22, she 16, and the match quietly united two neighbouring shares of the same Suffolk estate, Auberies, into one large holding. That land is really the third figure in the portrait. Gainsborough seats the young couple off to one side under an oak and gives the whole right half of the canvas to their fields, painted with unusual care. Look at the wheat behind them. It has been sown in the neat parallel rows of a new seed drill, and the sheaves are already stooked, a sign of the enclosed, efficiently farmed acres these two families had gained while common land was being fenced off across England. Frances's lap was left unfinished, a small pale patch of bare canvas that has puzzled viewers ever since.