Francis Basset, Lord de Dunstanville by Gainsborough, Thomas

Thomas Gainsborough painted this portrait of Francis Basset around 1786, and every brushstroke is a record of urgency. Gainsborough was dying of cancer. He knew his time was short, and he painted faster than anyone in London, sometimes finishing a full-length portrait in just three sittings. This speed became his late style: feathery, atmospheric, deliberately unresolved. The painting hangs in a private collection, but it remains one of the sharpest examples of what he could do while running out of time.

Run your eye down the row of gold buttons on the coat. They are not gold. They are a single dab of lead white with a whisper of ochre, placed wet into wet so the canvas shows through. The lace at his throat is painted with a flick of the wrist, a dry brush dragged across the surface. Gainsborough built illusion out of economy. He was not trying to fool you up close; he was betting you would stand back and the eye would do the work.

At sixty guineas a portrait, he was cheaper than his great rival Joshua Reynolds, who commanded a hundred. The rivalry was personal and public. Reynolds lectured on the intellectual dignity of history painting; Gainsborough shot back with sheer visual instinct. He painted Francis Basset with easy confidence, hand resting on a chair, land rolling away behind him. The landscape was what Gainsborough truly loved. He said he was sick of faces and longed to walk away into the country.

Most painters slow down at the end. Gainsborough sped up. This portrait is not a careful finish. It is a living decision, made in a room with a dying man who refused to stop.