セント・ジェームズ・パークのモール

Gainsborough painted this in 1783 for George III, and it shows a spot both painter and king knew well: the tree-lined Mall in St James's Park, a short walk from Gainsborough's house and from the royal palace of St James's. By then the Mall had stopped being the court where a croquet-like game called pall-mall was played and had become the place fashionable Londoners came to stroll and be seen. Gainsborough fills it with women in wide dresses and hats drifting in loose, feathery groups under the trees, more like a French garden party than a formal English portrait. Critics at the time caught the resemblance, comparing it to the dreamy park scenes of the earlier French painter Watteau. It has hung in the Frick Collection in New York since 1916.