Almost directly after his settlement at Bath the artist's manner changed very appreciably. This was probably due chiefly to the fact that he was able in the neighbourhood of Bath to see and study the works of great masters of the past, and notably the great family group by Van Dyck at Wilton House. He no doubt also had access to the fine array of works by Rubens then hanging at Blenheim and unfortunately now dispersed. The paintings of these masters seem to have disclosed to Gainsborough the possibilities of his materials, and from this moment his artistic development is rapid and decided, much more rapid than is generally believed. Most people imagine that all his best works date from the years of his life in London after 1774, and that the pictures of his Bath period, previous to that year, are comparatively much inferior. This is quite a mistake, for many of his most famous works were in fact painted at Bath and his genius had reached its full maturity long before he settled in Pall Mall. The fine half-length of Miss Linley and her brother, belonging to Lord Sackville at Knole, Lord Burton's "Lady Sussex and Lady Barbara Yelverton," the large equestrian portrait of General Honywood, several portraits of Garrick, such landscapes as those belonging to Lord Tweedmouth, Lord Bateman, and Mr. Lionel Phillipps were all painted at Bath, as was probably also the immortal "Blue Boy" itself.
One of the first of Gainsborough's sitters after his arrival at Bath was Mr. Robert Craggs Nugent, afterwards Viscount Clare and Earl Nugent, whose full-length portrait was the first picture ever sent by the artist to a public exhibition. It was shown at the Spring Garden Exhibition of the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1761 and now belongs to Sir George Nugent. In the following year a picture entered in the Society's catalogue as "A whole-length portrait of a gentleman with a gun," has been identified as the picture, now at Althorp, of William Poyntz, brother of Georgiana, the first Countess Spencer, herself the mother of that more famous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Both the mother and the daughter were painted about the same time, the latter as a little girl of five or six years of age. These two pictures of the usual half-length size are also at Althorp.
Year by year Gainsborough continued sending portraits and landscapes to the Society's exhibitions, the huge canvas of General Honywood on horseback hanging there in 1765; the next year came, among others, the full-length portrait of Garrick leaning against a bust of Shakespeare, painted for the Town Hall, Stratford-on-Avon, where it still hangs.
In 1769 the Royal Academy opened its first exhibition; Gainsborough was represented by four pictures, including a whole-length portrait of Isabella, Lady Molyneux, afterwards Countess of Sefton, and another of George Pitt, first Lord Rivers. In 1770 we find six pictures and a book of drawings, in the following year five full-lengths and two landscapes, and in 1772 no less than fourteen pictures, four of which were portraits, and ten "drawings in imitation of oil-painting;" these latter, of which a few exist, are curious productions drawn in water-colour on thick coarse paper laid down on canvas and then varnished; the process is not a very happy one, and the artist's fancy for it does not appear to have been lasting.
For the four following years Gainsborough's name is absent from the Academy catalogues from the cause already mentioned of a disagreement with Reynolds as recorded by Walpole. But during this time Gainsborough no doubt continued to turn out "heads" in great numbers, and not a few full-lengths, to say nothing of landscapes of varying size and importance. Several of these half-lengths are in the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery, while a considerable number are to be found in private collections.
Sir Walter Armstrong, in his monumental work on Gainsborough,[1] puts forward very forcibly the theory that the famous "Blue Boy" at Grosvenor House was painted about the year 1770 at Bath and not in 1779 in London, as has been generally supposed. It is impossible to reproduce here his closely reasoned arguments, but his conclusion is most probably correct that the "Blue Boy" is a masterpiece of Gainsborough's "Bath period." It is a portrait of a certain Jonathan Buttall, a very wealthy ironmonger who lived at the corner of King Street and Greek Street, Soho. He is represented at full-length, standing in a landscape, in a rich blue "Van Dyck" costume, holding a large hat with a white feather in his right hand. The history of the picture and the manner of its coming into the possession of the Duke of Westminster are uncertain; it may have been sold together with the effects of Jonathan Buttall, senior, after the death of his widow in 1796, when all his property was disposed of by public auction. It seems to have belonged to Hoppner, who died in 1810, and who probably is the author of the very good copy of the "Blue Boy" which is now in America, and has sometimes been looked upon as a replica from the master's own hand.
To this same period in the artist's career probably belongs another and almost equally famous picture which hangs on the same walls as the "Blue Boy." The Duke of Westminster's "Cottage Door," one of the finest of Gainsborough's landscapes or pastoral scenes, appears to have been a product of the last years spent at Bath, together with the great "Watering Place" at the National Gallery; the "Rustic Children" belonging to Lord Carnarvon and of which a small version is also in the National collection; Mr. G. L. Basset's "Cottage Girl," and many other landscapes of equal or lesser importance.