THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. | PORTRAIT OF PHILIP DEHANY WITH HIS WIFE MARGARET AND THEIR DAUGHTER MARY, FULL LENGTH, IN AN INTERIOR

Philip Dehany (1733-1809), the sitter;

By descent to the child in the portrait, Mary Dehany (1759-1832);

By descent to her adopted daughter, Wilhelmina Traill;

By descent to her brother, Col. James C. Traill;

His anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 29 May 1880, lot 117, where unsold;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 27 May 1882, lot 128, where unsold;

with Lesser, London, 1885;

with Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913), London ;

From whom acquired by Agnew's, London, in July 1885;

There acquired by Sir Julian Goldsmid, 3rd Bt (1838-1896), on 4 May 1889;

His sale, London, Christie's, 13 June 1896, lot 66, where acquired by Tooth;

Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson, Bt (1840-1929);

His sale, London, Christie's, 6 July 1923, lot 5, where unsold;

By descent to his daughter, Princess Ida Labia (1879-1961);

By descent to the Palace Foundation;

Their sale, London, Sotheby's, 16 November 1988, lot 59, where acquired by Leger Galleries;

There acquired by the present collector. 

W. Armstrong, Gainsborough and his Place in English Art, London and New York 1898, pp. 120, 194;

A.B. Chamberlain, Thomas Gainsborough, London n.d. (circa 1903), pp. 77-78;

W. Armstrong Gainsborough and his Place in English Art, London and New York 1904, p. 263;

A.E. Fletcher, Thomas Gainsborough, R.A., London 1904, p. 222;

W.B. Boulton, Thomas Gainsborough: His Life, Work, Friends and Sitters, London 1905, p. 181;

M. Menpes and J. Greig, Gainsborough, London 1909, p. 86;

E.R. Dibdin, Master Painters of the World: Thomas Gainsborough 1727-1788, London, New York, Toronto, Melbourne 1923, p. 86;

E.K. Waterhouse, "Preliminary Check List of Portraits by Thomas Gainsborough," Walpole Society, 1948-50, XXXIII, 1953, p. 28;

E.K. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, London 1958, p. 63, cat. no. 192;

M. Postle in R. Strong (ed.),  The British Portrait, 1660-1960, Woodbridge 1991, pp. 188, reproduced p. 198 color pl. 34;

S. Sloman, Gainsborough in Bath, New Haven and London 2002, pp. 57-58, 233 under note no. 58, reproduced p. 198 fig. 64;

J. Hamilton, Gainsborough: A Portrait, London 2017, p. 227;

H. Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough: The Portraits, Fancy Pictures, and Copies after Old Masters, New Haven and London 2019, vol. I, pp. 234-6, cat. no. 243, reproduced p. 235. 

Dating to circa 1761-2, this sumptuous, full-length portrait of the Dehany family is an important painting from Gainsborough’s formative Bath period. It was there that Gainsborough first experimented with a loose, impressionistic style of brushwork, seen here in Mrs. Dehany’s delicately layered rose skirt, that would come to elevate and define his career. The painting descended in the Dehany family for over a century, and later was in the collection of Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson, Bt. 

Philip Dehany (1733-1809) was the eldest son and heir of David Dehany, a merchant in Bristol and a planter in Jamaica, and his second wife, Mary, daughter of Matthew Gregory. From the 1730s, the family resided in the Bristol area and they continued to live there throughout the time of Philip's education at Westminster and Trinity College. Philip inherited his father's estate in 1754 and married Margaret Selter, seen in the group portrait here with their daughter, Mary Salter Dehany, born in June 1759. At that time they lived at Hungerford Park, Berkshire, but the subsequently moved to Farleigh Wallop, south of Basingstoke in Hampshire. Philip became a Member of Parliament for St Ives, Cambridgeshire in 1778-80. He was an active cricketer, supporting the Hambledon Cricket Club; he was a founding member of the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1787. 

Scholars place the group portrait in Gainsborough's Bath period, though the exact year is difficult to determine. As Mary Dehany was born in 1759, it is likely that the painting dates from at least 1761 and probably no later than 1762, given her ability to stand and pose for the portrait.  It is possible, however, that she is a bit older and the portrait could date from 1762-3, as suggested by Martin Postle (see Literature). After having worked in his native Suffolk for ten years, Gainsborough moved to Bath in June 1760, when he leased on the largest house in the center of Bath, opposite the west end of the Abbey.  Bath was an ideal town for a portrait painter: a highly fashionable spa, it drew to it wealthy citizens concerned with either their health or with fashion. The city itself was prosperous, and developments by such architects as John Wood the elder and younger greatly improved it. Moreover, apart from William Hoare, Gainsborough had little competition from other artists.

Business came in fast, and he was able to raise his prices from eight to twenty guineas for a head and from fifteen to forty guineas for a half length. His popularity and the demand for his portraits grew exponentially in his first years in the city, and he worked at a rapid pace in order to keep up with commissions. Indeed his output was so intense and exhausting that in 1763 the local newspaper announced his death, only to correct the report in the subsequent edition. Many of Gainsborough's best works from this period show a fluidity of brushwork that at once reflects the speed at which he was working but also the bold spontaneity and impressionistic method with which he was experimenting. The loose, layered depiction of the fabrics in Mrs. Dehany's gown exemplify his remarkable and forward-thinking painterly techniques. 

The Dehany family sat to Gainsborough in rich, layered clothing that was not only fashionable but also exemplary of their wealth, particularly in the extravagant and varied fabrics depicted. Mrs. Dehany is wearing a pink robe a la française with lace engageantes and a lace fichu, which Gainsborough's virtuoso brushwork has brought to life. A gold crucifix hangs on a chain around her neck, and she also wears venus-shell earrings and seed pearl bracelets. Young Mary wears a white dress with a blue sash around her waist, along with a coordinating blue ribbon in her bonnet. Mr. Dehany is sporting a buff coat over a waistcoat with gold lace and dark blue breeches. 

The painting has an extensive, recorded provenance and in its early days some amendments were made to the image, as discovered when the pictures was cleaned by Leger Galleries (see Provenance). In the late 1760s, Mrs. Dehany's hair was raised and a lace cap was added, a change which was not reversed during the later cleaning. Sometime prior to the 1880 sale, Mr. Dehany's coat was painted over in blue, though the 1989 cleaning returned it to its original buff color, as seen here. 

Note on the provenance

For much of the 20th century, the portrait was in the collection of the family of Sir Joseph B. Robinson, Bart. (1840-1929). Robinson was born in Cradock, Cape Colony and made his first fortune mining diamonds at Kimberley and later, in 1890, founded the Randfontein Estates Gold Mining Company. He and his family settled in England in late 1890s, taking up residence in Dudley House on Park Lane which had a magnificent eighty-foot long picture gallery originally created for the collection of the 11th Lord Ward. Robinson soon began collecting paintings himself with the help of his advisers, Sir George Donaldson and Charles Davis. Many of his most important purchases were made during the years 1894-99, the period when the Dehany portrait was acquired. In 1910 Robinson returned to South Africa where he remained for the duration of World War I and the contents of Dudley House were moved into storage at another location in London. By the end of the war Robinson was nearly eighty years old. In July of 1923, an auction comprising 116 lots from his collection was scheduled at Christie’s, an event which turned out to be one of the strangest sales to have taken place in the London auction rooms. On the eve of the sale, Robinson arrived in his wheelchair to bid farewell to his paintings, only to be seized with an acute attack of seller’s remorse. As it was too late to cancel the auction, he placed what he believed to be prohibitively high reserves on all the lots. Nevertheless, twelve paintings were still sold; the remaining 104 paintings were returned to storage and after Robinson’s death in 1929 they passed to his daughter, Ida, Princess Labia. She left them undisturbed in London until 1958 when 84 works, including the Dehany portrait, were exhibited at the Royal Academy.