Lives in a House, a Very Big House in the Country

When it comes to the British 18th Century in art, there is one picture that everyone knows...

Mr and Mrs Andrews (c.1749) Thomas Gainsborough (National Gallery, London)

The wedding portrait of Robert and Frances Andrews is one of the best loved paintings in the National Gallery in London, adorning notebooks, pillows and all manner of things.  The painting itself seems to attract differing readings of the figures and the landscape.  For a seemingly straightforward image of a couple of rich kids, there is a lot going on.  Firstly, the facts...

Mr and Mrs Carter of Bullingdon House, Bulmer, Essex (1847-8) Thomas Gainsborough

Robert Andrews (1725-1806) married Frances Mary Carter (1732-1780) at All Saints Church Sudbury in November 1748.  It is not believed to have been a romantic match, more of a business transactions between the two neighboring families. Frances Carter came from a wealthy family of drapers and her mother (pictured above in an earlier portrait by Gainsborough) was the daughter of a wealthy Huguenot cloth merchant. Her father had bought their estate in order to escape the financial ruin of the collapse of the textile industry, but had become property rich but not actually that wealthy. Robert Andrews' family, by contrast, were extremely wealthy but had no titles, just piles of money which they invested and lent to people including the Prince of Wales, who had borrowed around £30K.  

Self Portrait (1754) Thomas Gainsborough

When the couple were married, Robert Andrews called upon a young artist to paint their portrait.  It is believed that Andrews had been at school with Thomas Gainsborough, and Gainsborough had painted the portrait above of Frances' parents just prior to the children's wedding.  Gainsborough was barely into his 20s but already a talented painter, not to mention already a husband and father.  His passion was for landscape, but that did not pay the bills like portraiture. Why not start with your school friends and their incredibly rich families?

The Landscape half of Mr and Mrs Andrews

The picture is both a portrait of the couple and of their massive wealth in the shape of Auberies Farm, the estate that either Robert inherited or Frances brought with her at the time of marriage, as a dowry. Unlike the portrait of her parents, from the year before, Mr and Mrs Andrews makes a very definite point about the expanse of their lands, giving equal, if not greater, weight to them on the canvas. You can't actually see their home in the landscape, again hinting that the land is so vast you can't see everything.  In actual fact, the house is in front of them, it is what they are looking at, but Gainsborough has interestingly changed the landscape to draw prominence to certain things. Peeking through the trees you can see the church where they were married, and to one side are the roofs of the barns in Frances' parents' estate.  There are happy, fat sheep in the distance and stooks of corn gathered in the foreground. All is nature and her bounty.  On top of it all are Mr and Mrs Andrews.

Detail of Frances Andrews

Of the two of them, Frances Andrews is the figure most people comment on.  She seems stiff and doll-like and detached from her husband.  Some commentators think she looks smug and spoiled, but I think she looks like what she is, the teenage daughter of wealth.  She was sixteen years old in the painting, hence her slender appearance and she is the fashionable lady, with her curved skirts, echoed in the curve of the fancy Rococo bench.  I love her little feet poking out, casually crossed at the ankle. One explanation of why she is so stiff is that Gainsborough probably painted much of her figure from a mannequin, rather than have Frances sit for him.  The most debated point is the unfinished spot on her lap - what did the painter intend to place there - Some needlework?  A pheasant?  A child? Whatever Gainsborough intended to fill the spot with, it never appeared.

Detail of Robert Andrews

Not quite as enigmatic is Slouchy Bob, her husband, resplendent in his hunting / shooting / fishing clothes, complete with shotgun and dog.  He appears to be the sort of chap who doesn't feel the need to make an effort when it comes to dressing up and whilst his wife is glittery and blue in silk, he looks rumpled and casual, although you can't fault how white his stockings are.  I also get the feeling that Frances looks a little like the game he has recently bagged with his gun.  Do you think that's the point?  Do you think he is saying 'I've been out shooting and I've got me a wife!'

Stooks!

All the elements for a good marriage are present in the painting, from the strong oak tree representing longevity (it still stands on the same spot in the estate), the fecund countryside representing fertility, and the dog, loyalty.  Even the neat rows of the corn field have a meaning, showing the new technology of the seed drill by Jethro Tull.  The fact that the field has been brought much closer to the couple highlights the technology and progress that Robert has embraced on his land.  He is very much the man of the future, and so is his wife.  And probably his dog too.

Frances died in 1780 and Robert married again, dying in 1806.  The couple are buried together a St Andrew's Church in Bulmer.  The painting passed down in the family, only coming to public attention in the 1920s when it was exhibited for Gainsborough's bicentennial.  It toured extensively until it was sold at auction in the 1960s by the great-great-great grandson of the couple and purchased for the nation to hang in the National Gallery.

Mr and Mrs Andrews without their heads (1998) Yinka Shonibare

I am astonished that such a famous work of art does not have much in the way of an after-life.  It could be that although it is instantly recognisable in this country, the fame of Robert and Frances Andrews has not spread or stuck globally, unlike The Swing by Fragonard.  There are a few political cartoons using the conceit of a couple on a bench in front of the world they rule over but on the whole Yinka Shonibare has the only direct homage image I can find.

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-1) David Hockney

It could be argued that the painting has influenced art in other ways.  Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is a portrait of the fashion designer Ozzie Clark and his wife Celia Birtwell, and their cat Percy in their stylish home in Notting Hill Gate.  Similar to Gainsborough and Robert Andrews, Clark and David Hockney studied together, at the Royal College of Art in London.  This could be seen as Ozzie and Celia's 'wedding portrait' as Hockney, who was the couple's best man, took photographs for it in the year they were married, completing the work two years later.  Ozzie Clark looks relaxed, his feet buried in the fur rug, but Celia Birtwell looks more formal and as upright as the lilies that are next to her on the canvas.  The animal in the image echoes Andrews' faithful dog, but in Clark's case it is Percy the cat, hinting at a more selfish and possibly libidinous, rule-breaking nature.  Hockney made the point that he reversed the normal positions for men and women in portraits, with Celia standing and Ozzie seated, but also the couple are not united in the portrait at all, an open window between them. The marriage did not last.

Sir George and Lady Strickland in the Park at Boynton Hall  (1751) Arthur Devis

At the time of painting, Gainsborough created something new in the portrait of Robert and Frances Andrews.  It is a triple portrait, of the couple and their estate, all elements given equal weight.  Whilst it's easy to joke that you can tell Gainsborough really wants to just paint landscapes and has to shove the figures in, he is also presenting the couple with the source of the power and position, the reason they are able to have the portrait painted.  If it was an experiment in 1749, it was successful as we can see by Arthur Devis' 1751 portrait of Sir George and Lady Strickland and their massive estate and dog.  Comparable to Gainsborough's original, Devis' work is more accomplished in style (due to age and experience) and the figures are more natural but the effect is the same.  This is the moment when a newly married couple had the world in their massive, silky laps.  

Mr and Mrs Andrews will eternally serve product and proof of this.