The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly, 1755 Oil on canvas

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), the most outrageously enjoyable British artist. Gainsborough, born in the Suffolk market town of Sudbury, built up his portrait business gradually, establishing a spectacularly successful studio in the spa town of Bath, finally hitting the capital as an artist of unparalleled style and sophistication. For all his control he was man of feeling, which shows in every brushstroke of his gorgeous paintings.

Mary (1750-1826) and Margaret (1752-1820) Gainsborough had difficult lives. As daughters of a fashionable painter they had access to high society – even to the court – but they were never going to be accepted by it. As they grew up, they came to be regarded as unmarriageable. When Mary did marry, it was to a temperamental oboeist. It didn’t last. Mary and Margaret later lived together; Mary descended into mental illness.

This painting is almost unbearably touching and lyrical. It has the light of a summer evening, the spontaneity of childhood itself. Seen from a distance down a hall at the National Gallery, Gainsborough’s daughters move dramatically through space, levitated as if by a magic carpet.

This moment of childhood is an enchanted theatre. The bright light on the children’s faces lifts them out of a darker background like stage lighting. They have slipped, in the eyes of their doting father, out of the garden and into fairyland. Gainsborough enfolds his daughters in a folkloric woodland, where it’s getting dark, but they are illuminated by his looking.

The woods might get menacing later, though, and the delicate creature they are trying to catch might be the flimsy moment of their own infancy fluttering away as they reach out for it. The point is emphasised by the way that, holding hands in silver and gold dresses, they themselves resemble the silken wings of a butterfly.

While three-year-old Mary grabs out thoughtlessly, Margaret, five, is more considered, eager to study the butterfly, to see it. Perhaps she has learned the possibility of sublimating desire into looking rather than touching, a civilising process that shapes the sensuality of Gainsborough’s own paintings. He hoped his daughters would become artists; in 1764, he wrote to his friend James Unwin that he was “upon a scheeme of learning them both to paint Landscape”. Around the time of this letter, in 1763 or 1764, he painted them with sketchbooks as trainee artists, beside a statue of the classical goddess Flora – a deity for them to draw, as well as an allusion to flowers, nature and landscape.

In this picture, that is all in the future. But there is a definite Enlightenment sense of curiosity and discovery, of two children eagerly moving forward into a world of knowledge. The knowledge they pursue is that of nature. The painting is full of Gainsborough’s delight in the natural world – the leaves, clouds, air itself. If you were a prisoner in an airless cell, you might ask for a postcard of a Gainsborough.

Close-up of Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly

 Information about this painting was from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2002/mar/23/art

Tags: artsunday

deletereply pestep55 wrote on Dec 27, ’08 Wow, what a tale to accompany such a lovely painting /:-)

deletereply philsgal7759 wrote on Dec 27, ’08 You know butterflies will get me to drop by lovely work with a great story and rich symbolism thanks

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Dec 27, ’08 I love this painting. I find it so mysterious and interesting.

deletereply forgetmenot525 wrote on Dec 27, ’08 truly a beautiful painting, these little girls look so alive dancing along chasing butterflies. brilliant example of Gainsboughs ability as an artist, fantastic use of colour and light.

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Dec 27, ’08 I discovered this artist on my own on the internet. This painting is really the only one I admire by Gainsboughs though. Hauntingly beautiful.

deletereply starfishred wrote on Dec 27, ’08 wasn’t he such a lovely painter his colors were so lovely -I love his blue boy to all his stuff is wonderful thanks

deletereply nemo4sun wrote on Dec 28, ’08 precious 🙂

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Dec 28, ’08 It’s so adorable.