Thomas Gainsborough: Mr and Mrs Andrews, Mr and Mrs Hallett

Mr and Mrs Andrews, National Gallery, London. 

Mr and Mrs Hallett, National Gallery, London 

The portraits of Mr and Mrs Andrews (c.1750) and Mr and Mrs Hallett (1785) by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) are both in the National Gallery. Both paintings depict a couple in a landscape and both were painted as a celebration of marriage. It is possible to detect other similarities. For example, the heads of Mr and Mrs Andrews are thrown into sharp relief against the background of a dark sky and a dark tree trunk, just as the heads of Mr and Mrs Hallett are highlighted against the dark foliage of the tree behind them. The stockings, shoe buckles and hands of Mr Andrews resemble those of Mr Hallett. Nevertheless, what strikes one most about the two paintings is not their resemblances but their differences. It is surprising to find that both paintings are the work of the same artist - although done at different ends of his career. Mr and Mrs Andrews is smallish in size, with firm outlines, bright colours, and a naturalistic landscape background. Mr and Mrs Hallett is much larger in size, with almost life-size figures, painted in a more impressionistic style, with a subdued colour scheme and a sketchy, generalised landscape background. It is our task to explain the differences between these two paintings. As we shall see, the answers lie not just in Gainsborough’s personal development as an artist but also in the demands of his clients and the changing tastes of the eighteenth century.

We must begin by looking at the social status of the sitters. The father of Mr Andrews was “a gentleman” and the father of Mrs Andrews was a wealthy cloth merchant. (Egerton 81-82). Both fathers had bought land, which was a means of acquiring social status. Mr and Mrs Andrews had an arranged marriage, a means of uniting the two adjacent pieces of land into one large estate. Mr Andrews had a keen interest in farming – he sent a letter to Arthur Young, the famous agriculturalist, about diseases in wheat (Egerton 84) – and this explains why he is depicted against a background of sheaves of corn and a distant field of sheep. To turn now to the Halletts, Mr Hallett’s paternal grandfather owned a cabinet-making business and his maternal grandfather was a city financier. Mr Hallett inherited a country house with an estate, plus further money on his marriage to Elizabeth, the daughter of a surgeon (Egerton 122). Mr Hallett had no interest in farming and wasted most of his inheritance in betting on horse races. The important point is that the Andrews and the Halletts had basically the same social status – they were both nouveau riche middle-class who had recently made the transition to landed gentry. Gainsborough depicts Mr and Mrs Andrews as they must have been in reality – a country squire and his wife, dressed in their ordinary clothes, posing in their estate – which must have been how the Andrews wished to be presented. Yet when, thirty-five years later, Gainsborough comes to paint the Halletts – who had similar social standing to the Andrews – he seeks to elevate their status above what it was in reality, by romanticising them as a slim, handsome, fashionably-dressed, aristocratic-looking young couple, walking through a landscape of Arcadian beauty, in a painting of monumental size. The taste of the later eighteenth century - partly due to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) - was no longer content with the plainer portraiture of Hogarth, Hudson, or the early Gainsborough, but wanted something grander and more obviously “artistic”.

The portraits of Mr and Mrs Andrews and Mr and Mrs Hallett were both painted to celebrate the recent marriages of the sitters and to advertise their social status. The blank space in the lap of Mrs Andrews may possibly have been intended to be filled later by a baby, which had not yet been born (Egerton 86). Mr and Mrs Andrews pose slightly apart, detached from each other, perhaps because theirs was an arranged marriage. By contrast, Mr and Mrs Hallett walk together arm-in-arm, and Mr Hallett has an almost feminine face, perhaps to show that he can empathise with his wife and that he is a “man of feeling”. The later eighteenth century, with its cult of “sensibility”, stressed the importance of love between a married couple (Shawe-Taylor 133). Amanda Vickery, on the National Gallery website, says that Gainsborough’s portrait of the Halletts is “almost the equivalent of the engagement photograph today” (Vickery). We think of the photos in Country Life magazine. To take the photography analogy further, the landscape through which the Halletts are walking has a resemblance to the painted backdrops against which Victorian photographers liked to place their clients. And the slim, beautifully dressed figures of Mr and Mrs Hallett have a certain affinity with the models in present day fashion photographs. After Gainsborough had completed his portrait of the Halletts, it was displayed for a while in his studio (Egerton 120). This may have been to enable friends and acquaintances of the Halletts to view the picture, as clients often liked to have their portraits on public display before taking them away (Shawe-Taylor 14). This could also explain why the Halletts wanted such an imposing full-length portrait, as they expected it to be viewed by many people.

The format of Mr and Mrs Andrews is a “conversation piece”, a type of portrait developed by Hayman, Hogarth, Devis and others, showing a group of people – usually a family and their friends – drinking tea or playing cards in an interior, or else relaxing outside in the grounds of their estate (Shawe-Taylor 128). Gainsborough’s painting is unusual in that the Andrews are positioned to one side of the picture, to give greater emphasis to their estate - but that is probably what Mr Andrews had requested. The “conversation piece” format began to go out of fashion after about 1750 (Vaughan 37), and the Halletts in 1785 commissioned a much grander, full-length portrait. Mr and Mrs Andrews are posing stiffly, but Mr and Mrs Hallett are shown engaged in an action – walking through a landscape – and they are united in looking at something which has caught their attention outside the picture. Mr and Mrs Andrews has something of the small-scale daintiness often associated with rococo portraits, while Mr and Mrs Hallett has the kind of grandeur and bold design advocated by Reynolds, though also with a decorative quality rather foreign to Reynolds. Reynolds’ description of Correggio’s style could also describe the later portraits of Gainsborough: “His style is founded upon modern grace and elegance, to which is added something of the simplicity of the grand style” (Reynolds 72).  Mr and Mrs Hallett owes something to the influence of Van Dyck (1599-1641), some of whose works Gainsborough had studied in country houses near Bath. Gainsborough once made a copy of a Van Dyck, and Reynolds admiringly said he could hardly tell it from the original (Lindsay 181). A vague air of Van Dyck – an “old master” who had painted royalty and aristocracy – helps to raise the status of the Halletts. Mr and Mrs Hallett have elongated bodies, beautiful costumes, an air of elegance and refinement, in a painting of monumental size – all features of Van Dyck’s portraits. Gainsborough has caught something of Van Dyck’s spirit, but without copying any particular work by Van Dyck. And in this Gainsborough would again win the approval of Reynolds, who advised painters to “imitate” an old master without slavishly copying him: “it is enough however to pursue his course; you need not tread in his footsteps” (Reynolds 101)

It is useful to compare the general style and composition of the two paintings. The figures of Mr and Mrs Andrew are delineated with fairly sharp outlines, a linear style which perhaps reflects Gainsborough’s training under Hubert Gravelot (1699-1773), a French engraver. The stiffness of the figures – especially Mrs Andrews – may reflect the fact that Gravelot taught drawing by getting his pupils to copy dolls (Lindsay 17). The crinkly curves of Mr and Mrs Andrews’ garments are echoed by the curves of the rococo seat upon which Mrs Andrews is sitting and the curve of the tree branch above her. This may even be an influence from Hogarth’s serpentine “line of beauty”. Although Mr and Mrs Andrew are a little detached from the landscape, the painting does have an overall harmony, because curves occur again in the distant trees and clouds; and the blue and white of Mrs Andrews’ dress echoes the colours of the sky. The figures of Mr and Mrs Hallett are painted in a looser manner, and the use of shadows causes the Halletts to merge and blend with the landscape. We see again an overall harmony through the subtleties of colour and design. For example, the greenish tinge of the ribbons in Mrs Hallett’s hat echoes the green of the trees, the black of Mr Hallett’s suit echoes the black of his wife’s hat, the white feathers in Mrs Hallett’s hat mirror the fluffy tail of her dog.

When studying eighteenth-century portraits, it is important to consider the poses of the sitters, as this was another means of demonstrating the sitters’ status and refinement. Mr Andrews stands in a relaxed pose, with one leg bent, one hand in his pocket, and one arm leaning on the garden seat. This could be interpreted as a pose of easy, well-bred nonchalance. This cross-legged pose, with one leg bent and the other straight, is common in eighteenth-century male portraits and is said to derive from an antique statue of the god Pothos (Cormack 16). However, Mr Andrews’ pose could also be interpreted as slovenly, almost loutish, especially when one remembers that Gainsborough secretly disliked his patrons, the gentry. Gainsborough wrote that gentlemen “have but one part worth looking at, and that is their purse” (Gainsborough 42). Mr Andrews is holding a gun under his arm, which asserts his status as a landowner, because hunting was illegal unless one owned land which brought an income of at least £100 a year (Mingay 249). The snobbish Earl of Chesterfield wrote that a love of “rustic, illiberal sports of guns, dogs and horse” marked the participant as an “English bumpkin country gentleman” (Mingay 152). It is also worth noting that Mr Andrews’ dog is a gun dog, whereas Mrs Hallett’s dog is a pet, a fluffy white Spitz dog, an important fashion accessory for a lady in the 1780s. Mrs Andrews, sitting on the garden seat, appears to have crossed her legs and is thrusting them out in what could be interpreted as a rather unladylike manner. Whatever reservations we may have about the deportment of the Andrews, there are no such worries when it comes to the Halletts. The Halletts are tall and slim – a fashion set by dandies called the Macaronis (Shawe-Taylor 68) – and they stroll arm-in-arm together. Mr Hallett is walking sedately, exposing his stockinged leg for our admiration, and he has courteously removed his hat – unlike Mr Andrews, who keeps his hat firmly on his head. The expressions on the Halletts’ faces seem reserved and urbane, whereas Mr and Mrs Andrew look rather grumpy – possibly because they are in the presence of Gainsborough, a social inferior. By 1785, Gainsborough had advanced in status and would probably have been regarded as a social equal of the Halletts.

The costumes are closely related to the deportment and status of the sitters. The Andrews appear to be wearing their everyday clothes, although Mrs Andrews’ lovely blue dress was probably her best one. The Halletts are dressed more fashionably, perhaps the clothes in which they were married (Egerton 122). Mrs Hallett is wearing a loose-flowing dress and a hat with ostrich feathers - fashions promoted by the Duchess of Devonshire (Vaughan 176) - and Mr Hallett is wearing an elegant black suit – since fashions for men were less colourful in the later part of the century. Falling light creates a beautiful sheen upon Mrs Hallett’s silk dress. Gainsborough thought that such “ornamental” effects and “lively touches” were essential to a portrait (Gainsborough 112-113). Unlike Reynolds, who said that too much attention to dress in a portrait was “curiously trifling” (Reynolds 19). Gainsborough painted all the costumes himself, again unlike Reynolds, who often delegated this work to his team of studio assistants.

The landscape backgrounds of the two paintings are very different. The landscape of Mr and Mrs Andrews is a topographical view of an actual place. The field of sheep, the field of cattle, and the sheaves of corn all testify to Mr Andrews’ farming interests. Between the trees we catch a glimpse of the church where Mr and Mrs Andrews were married. However, the scene is more than just topography. The art historian Judy Egerton has researched the actual spot where Gainsborough would have been standing - the tree still exists, although it is now dead - and she has discovered that the Andrews’ country house – called The Auberies – would have been immediately behind him. She points out that it is unlikely that the field of corn in the foreground would have been so close to the house, and that this must be a piece of artistic licence, introduced into the scene to show the importance of crop growing to Mr Andrews (Egerton 84). The rococo seat upon which Mrs Andrews is sitting would also suggest that we are close to the house. The landscape is a depiction of the Suffolk countryside on a sunny afternoon, but it also owes something to the influence of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape paintings, with which Gainsborough was very familiar. One of Gainsborough’s first jobs was restoring old Dutch paintings (Vaughan 43-44); and when he was dying he wrote movingly of his “fondness for my first imitations of little Dutch landskips” (Gainsborough 174).  In Mr and Mrs Andrews, the great rolling clouds, the signs of an approaching storm, the patches of earth illuminated by sunshine, and the plants in the foreground are all typical of the landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682). However, when Gainsborough painted a portrait of himself – the Portrait with his Wife and Daughter (c.1748), also in the National Gallery – he did not use a naturalistic background but chose instead a sketchy, impressionistic landscape, rather in the manner of Van Dyck or Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). This was also the kind of landscape appropriate for the portrait of the Halletts. The landscape here is mainly an artistic backdrop, a foil to set off the splendid figures of Mr and Mrs Hallett. The traditional brownish tones used in parts of the landscape are appropriate for a painting in the “old master” style. Sir George Beaumont (1753-1827), a connoisseur of paintings, thought that “A good picture, like a good fiddle, should be brown” (Ball 153). The landscape background in Mr and Mrs Hallett is very similar to the one used by Gainsborough in his portrait of Mrs Robinson (1781) in the Wallace Collection, which shows that the landscape is of secondary importance to the figures. Yet the landscape does have its own part to play, for the later eighteenth century, with its cult of the “picturesque” and love of wild nature, tended to prefer a scene of woodlands – through which the Halletts are walking – to a scene of cultivated farmland like that in which the Andrews are posing.

The difference in painting techniques is a fundamental difference between Mr and Mrs Andrews and Mr and Mrs Hallett. This also contributes to the meanings of the two works. In Mr and Mrs Andrews, the forms are precisely delineated and the colours are bright and naturalistic, illuminated by the strong light of a sunny afternoon. The painting provides a visual record – albeit a rather flattering one – of the Andrews and their world. Mr and Mrs Hallett is less straightforward and more consciously “artistic”. The time is early morning and the subdued lighting allows effects of light and shadow. This helps to unify the painting, helps to give it atmosphere, and helps the Halletts to blend with their surroundings.

 Gainsborough knew that there should be a harmony between all the parts of a picture: “One part of a picture ought to be like the first part of a tune, that you can guess what follows” (Gainsborough 71). Reynolds saw that this was what Gainsborough was trying to achieve, for he praised Gainsborough’s “manner of forming all the parts of his picture together; the whole going on at the same time” (Reynolds 251). Reynolds was a little worried by Gainsborough’s lack of “precision and finishing”, but he recognised that this contributed to the “lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures” (Reynolds 259, 260). Gainsborough himself wrote that “roughness of the surface” and the visible “touch of the pencil” (brush) are good qualities, because they are signs of a work’s originality (Gainsborough 10).

We can find evidence of all this in Mr and Mrs Hallett. The sketchy, indeterminate manner can be seen especially in the landscape. For example, the blotchy trees in the distance and the ground on which the Halletts are walking, which was created by allowing the brownish under-painting to show through. The faces of Mr and Mrs Hallett are hazy and soft, yet their lips, eyes and eyebrows are sharply painted, to give character and beauty to their faces. The paint is applied thinly – the paint of Mrs Hallett’s scarf has faded and the trees are now visible beneath it – and this gives a smooth, enamelled quality to the whole work. The painting is in oils, but the light, feathery brushwork gives it almost the effect of a gigantic painting in pastel. This may be the effect Gainsborough intended. He had experience with pastels and was always experimenting with new techniques. For example, he varnished a few of his coloured drawings to give them the effect of oil paintings (Gainsborough 110-111). Pastel was a medium particularly associated with the French – Perronneau and La Tour. The delicacy and decorative qualities of Gainsborough’s art have strong affinities with French rococo. Mr and Mrs Hallett is related to Gainsborough’s earlier painting of The Mall in St. James’s Park  (1783) – which shows fashionably dressed ladies gliding beneath leafy trees – a painting inspired by the fêtes galantes of Watteau (Vaughan 171-174).

An essential difference between Mr and Mrs Andrews and Mr and Mrs Hallett is that the Andrews are showing us what they own – their large estate, their well-run farm, their right to hunt, their rococo garden seat – while the Halletts are showing us what they are – their elegance and refinement, their love of nature, their love for each other. The Andrews’ emphasis on material possessions might possibly have seemed rather vulgar to the Halletts. To some extent, both paintings depict character types rather than individuals: the country squire and his wife; the fashionable young couple in love. The poetic quality of Mr and Mrs Hallett has turned it into a symbol for the grace and elegance of the whole eighteenth century, and the painting is now more often known by its general title of The Morning Walk. Thus Gainsborough, in his own way, achieves the same aim as Reynolds, which was to raise the status of a portrait and make it more than just the depiction of an individual.

Works Cited

Ball, Philip Bright Earth: the Invention of Colour London: Viking (Penguin), 2001.

Cormack, Malcolm The Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991

Egerton, Judy The British School London: National Gallery, 1998

Gainsborough, Thomas The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough Ed. John Hayes. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001

Lindsay, Jack Gainsborough: His Life and Art London: Granada Publishing, 1982.

Mingay, G. E. English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century London: Routledge, 1963.

Reynolds, Joshua Discourses on Art Ed. Robert R Wark. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997.

Shawe-Taylor, Desmond The Georgians: Eighteenth Century Portraiture and Society London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1990

Vaughan, William Gainsborough London: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

Vickery, Amanda Mr and Mrs Hallett National Gallery podcast number 54. www.nationalgallery.org.uk