Thomas Hudson, 1701–1779, Britishflower basket and some of the draperies by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1734–1797, British, active in Italy (1773–75)
Title:
The Thistlethwayte Family
Date:
ca. 1758
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
73 1/4 × 84 1/2 inches (186.1 × 214.6 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B2002.27
Gallery Label:
A few years after Thomas Hudson’s death, the connoisseur and author Horace Walpole gently mocked the artist’s portraits and conversation pieces as “country gentlemen . . . content with [their] honest similitudes, and with . . . fair tied wigs, blue velvet coats, and white satin waistcoats.” It is an apt summary of Hudson’s unpretentious style that was tailored to his often unsophisticated clientele. Walpole might easily have been describing a gentleman like Alexander Thistlethwayte of Southwick Park in Hampshire, who poses in this nearly life-size conversation piece with his wife, Sarah, and their daughters, Catherine and Anne. If her husband’s taste in clothes was rather conservative, Sarah Thistlethwayte chose to be painted wearing the latest style, in a silk sack-back dress. She adorns her younger daughter’s hair with flowers, while the elder daughter decorates her hat with a garland. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
