Artifact World Gallery
Get the iOS app

Mrs. Ralph Izard (Alice De Lancey, 1746/47–1832) by Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough · 1767-01-01

Thomas Gainsborough painted Alice De Lancey Izard in 1767, the year she married Ralph Izard, a wealthy South Carolina planter and future U.S. senator. She was barely eighteen, a colonial heiress in London, and this portrait announced her arrival into British society. It now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The first thing to notice is the single pink rose cradled at her bodice. Gainsborough used the pink rose as a conventional symbol of new love and betrothal, a quiet affirmation of her recent marriage. Then follow the white-silver silk. The highlight strokes are almost calligraphic: long, dry dashes of paint that flicker across the shoulder and sleeve. This is Gainsborough beginning to loosen his hand, moving toward the feathery touch that would define his late portraits.

Gainsborough painted fast, he hated finishing hands (look how soft and barely individualised her fingers are), and he famously preferred landscape over portraiture. Yet by 1767 he was already one of London's most sought-after portraitists, a founding member of the Royal Academy, and the only serious rival to Joshua Reynolds. This oval format was unusual for him at this date. The dark spandrels compress the figure like a cameo, pushing her pale face and luminous dress forward with an intensity that Reynolds's more classical compositions rarely matched.

The painting's later life is quieter than its sitter's. Alice De Lancey Izard lived to 85, outlasting her husband by decades and seeing a new nation rise from the colonies she left behind. When you look at her composed, slightly averted gaze, you are seeing a young woman on the edge of a life that would span the American Revolution and everything that followed.

Details

She was eighteen, newly married, and from one of the richest colonial families.
She was eighteen, newly married, and from one of the richest colonial families.
A single pink rose. Gainsborough's symbol for a new marriage.
A single pink rose. Gainsborough's symbol for a new marriage.
Now look at the silk. The brush barely touches the canvas.
Now look at the silk. The brush barely touches the canvas.
Her fingers are deliberately soft. He was famous for hating to paint hands.
Her fingers are deliberately soft. He was famous for hating to paint hands.
The deep umber-brown ground is a Gainsborough signature , it pushes the pale figure forward while hinting at an unspecified interior space, a technique lifted from van Dyck.
The deep umber-brown ground is a Gainsborough signature , it pushes the pale figure forward while hinting at an unspecified interior space, a technique lifted from van Dyck.
Transcript

She was eighteen, newly married, and from one of the richest colonial families. He painted her in London. The bill has not survived. A single pink rose. Gainsborough's symbol for a new marriage. Now look at the silk. The brush barely touches the canvas. Those calligraphic white streaks are pure bravura. This is where he starts to loosen up. Her fingers are deliberately soft. He was famous for hating to paint hands.