公園での語らい

Gainsborough was about 19 when he painted this, and it is thought to show himself and Margaret, the young woman he married that same year, 1746. The two sit close on a bench in the grounds of a grand country estate, he leaning toward her, she in a wide silk dress, the trees curling around them in the light French manner then fashionable in England. It is an early example of what the English called a conversation piece, a small informal group portrait set outdoors. People have linked its mood to Gainsborough's own courtship in the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall, in London. The park around them was almost certainly invented. The couple owned no such estate.