of Landguard Fort, who describes his portraits at this time as ‘truly drawn, perfectly like, but stiffly painted, and worse coloured.’ Among his sitters was Admiral Vernon. For Thicknesse he painted a view of Landguard Fort with the royal yachts passing the garrison under the salute of guns, which was engraved by Major. To this Ipswich period belong his more carefully drawn and detailed landscapes in the Dutch manner, like the wood scene, with a view of the village of Cornard in Suffolk (No. 925 in the National Gallery), and known as ‘Gainsborough's Forest,’ under which name a print of it was published by the Boydells in 1790. Among his friends and patrons at Ipswich were Mr. Kilderbee, Mr. Edgar, a lawyer of Colchester, and the Rev. James Hingeston, vicar of Raydon, Suffolk (portraits of members of the Edgar and Hingeston families and other works of Gainsborough belonging to the Edgar family were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in the winters of 1885 and 1888). Mr. Hingeston's son, in a letter quoted by Fulcher, gives a very pleasant picture of Gainsborough in these days. Gainsborough, he says, was generally beloved for his affability; received with honour by the country gentlemen, and winning the grateful recollections of the peasantry. The panels of several of the rooms in Hingeston's house were ‘adorned with the productions of his genius. In one is a picture of Gainsborough's two daughters, when young; they are engaged in chasing a butterfly.’ Music at this time, as afterwards, was the principal amusement of his leisure hours. Thicknesse lent him a violin, on which he soon learnt to play better than the lender; and he belonged to a musical club at Ipswich, and painted a picture of the members.
At the suggestion of Thicknesse, who passed his winters at Bath, Gainsborough removed to that city in 1760. Much to the alarm of his wife he took lodgings in the newly built Circus, at the rent of 50l. a year. But sitters flocked to him at once, and the portrait of Thicknesse, which was to have been painted as a kind of decoy-duck, was put aside and never finished. He soon raised his price for a head from five to eight guineas, and ultimately fixed it at forty guineas for a half, and a hundred for a whole length. The Society of Artists, founded in 1759, held their first exhibition in London in the following year, and he contributed to its exhibitions from 1761 to 1768, sending eighteen works in all. This society was incorporated by royal charter in 1765, and Gainsborough's name appears on the roll of members in 1766. In 1768 he was elected one of the original members of the Royal Academy, and contributed to its exhibitions from 1769 to 1772, when, in consequence of some misunderstanding with Sir Joshua Reynolds, he withdrew his contributions for four years, by the end of which time he was settled in London. After this quarrel, as after that of 1783, he sent a picture or so to the Free Society. During this period (1769–72) he exhibited several landscapes, large and small, with and without figures, but then, as afterwards, the majority of his contributions were portraits. As Gainsborough never signed and seldom dated his works, and as in the catalogues the landscapes are without titles and the portraits unnamed, except in the case of persons of importance, it is difficult to identify most of the pictures as exhibited in any particular year, but the following portraits are duly named: 1761, Mr. Nugent, afterwards Lord Clare; 1762, Mr. Poyntz; 1763, Quin the actor and Mr. Medlicott; 1765, General Honywood (on horseback) and Colonel Nugent; 1766, Garrick (for the corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, said by Mrs. Garrick to be the best portrait ever taken of ‘her Davy’); 1767, Lady Grosvenor, John, duke of Argyll, and Mr. Vernon, son of Lord Vernon; 1768, Captain Needham and Captain Augustus Hervey (afterwards Earl of Bristol); 1769, Isabella, lady Molyneux, and George Pitt (eldest son of the first Lord Rivers); 1770, Garrick; 1774, Lady Sussex, Lord and Lady Ligonier (2), Mr. Nuthall and Captain Wade. All of these were whole lengths, except the Garrick of 1766, which was three-quarters. One at least of the unnamed portraits added greatly to his reputation. Writing to Fuseli at Rome, Mary Moser [q. v.] observes: ‘I suppose there has been a million of letters sent to Italy with an account of our exhibition, so it will be only telling you what you know already to say that Gainsborough is beyond himself in a portrait of a gentleman in a Vandyke habit.’ One of the pictures of this year is described in the catalogue as ‘Portrait of a Young Gentleman,’ and it has been suggested that the picture referred to by Miss Moser was none other than the famous ‘Blue Boy.’ Some of the pictures of the Bath period are identified by their having been in the possession of Mr. Wiltshire, the public carrier of Bath, who ‘loved Gainsborough and admired his works,’ and could not be persuaded to accept payment for taking his pictures to London. To him the artist, with his accustomed generosity, gave some of his finest pictures, including portraits of Quin and Foote the actors, Orpin, the parish clerk of Bradford-on-Avon (now in the National Gallery), and some
