Gainsborough painted many portraits of George the Third's consort. The bust here reproduced is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is a replica, somewhat less brilliant in colour, of the picture at Windsor Castle.
Of all the artists of this golden epoch, which produced such men as Reynolds and Raeburn, Romney, Hoppner, Lawrence, and Turner, the most brilliant and the most versatile was undoubtedly Thomas Gainsborough.
[II]
GAINSBOROUGH'S EARLY LIFE—IPSWICH AND BATH
Thomas Gainsborough was born at Sudbury in Suffolk in May 1727; he was thus four years younger than Reynolds, thirteen years younger than Wilson. He came from a respectable family of old standing and in comfortable circumstances. His father, John Gainsborough, was a clothier by trade, and of his mother little is known save that she was a gentle and kind woman, very indulgent to her children. They had four daughters and five sons, of whom Thomas was the youngest. Thomas was far from diligent at school; he filled his copy-books with sketches, and was not loth to play the truant in order to get into the woods and meadows, where he would sit drawing trees, flowers, or cattle. A story is even told of his having forged his father's name to a note asking the schoolmaster to "give Tom a holiday." When his father saw the forged note he exclaimed, "The boy will come to be hanged!" but when he was shown the sketches which his son had made during his hours of stolen liberty he changed his verdict to "The boy will be a genius!"