Ann Ford - 1. the portrait

What's in a face?

Would you say that she's self-assured and happy in herself? Defiant perhaps, or even impudent? Or do you read something else in her expression?

And have you noticed the jewellery that she’s wearing? What does that tell you?

Here’s the full portrait.

Her name is Ann Ford.

She was born on 23 February 1737 and so she must have been 22 or 23 when she first sat for Thomas Gainsborough.

This was the first full-length portrait that he displayed in his “picture room” (gallery) in his house in Abbey Street, Bath after setting himself up there in 1759.

It was a “show picture” exhibited to entice in potential customers. Not only was it true to life, but it demonstrates his trademark skills of capturing the satin folds of her ivory silk sacque dress and her lacy sleeves.

The sitting might have been arranged by Lady Elizabeth Thicknesse (nee Tuchet) who was married to Philip Thicknesse, and who knew Gainsborough well.

“Went to see Mr Gainsborough’s pictures. There I saw Miss Ford’s picture - a whole length with her guitar, a most extraordinary figure; handsome, bold… (and then the much quoted line:) …but I should be sorry to have anyone I loved set forth in such a manner”.

That’s what Mrs Delaney wrote to her friend, Mrs Dewes, on 22 October 1760.

Why did she say this? Later books on Bath assume that it was because Ann was sitting with her legs crossed - supposedly a masculine pose, and interpreted at the time as not very lady like and worse: impertinent.

But her somewhat languid pose is far from the whole story…. Gainsborough packed in symbolisms that wouldn’t have been lost on the people of the time. Thats what the next part (instruments) is all about.