Portrait of Mrs Bedingfield and her Daughter

Mrs. Bedingfield and her child are set in their blue-grey dresses against a rich plum coloured background - a colour harmony that Gainsborough was to develop more fully later in his famous 'Blue Boy'. Gainsborough handles the painting of Mrs. Bedingfield's face with a striking command of 18th century academic chiaroscuro, which gives way in his later mature work to a more fluid use of paint. This work is dated to a time after Gainsborough had left Ipswich and was practising in Bath, then at the height of its fame as a fashionable resort.