Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, Gainsborough, 1750

The museum near where I grew up had a large and beautiful painting entitle Blue Boy by Gainsborough and I have since liked him quite a lot.  Maybe it is the familiarity, but I do like things from the mid-eighteenth century because I come from Revolutionary roots.
This portrait is the masterpiece of Gainsborough's early years. It was painted after his return home from London to Suffolk in 1748, soon after the marriage of Robert Andrews of the Auberies and Frances Carter of Ballingdon House, near Sudbury, in November of that year.  So very much the class-conscious England of the day.
The landscape evokes Robert Andrews's estate, to which his marriage added property. He has a gun under his arm, while his wife sits on an elaborate  wooden bench. The painting of Mrs Andrews's lap is unfinished. The space may have been reserved for a child for Mrs Andrews to hold.  What happened?  We do not know.
The painting follows the fashionable convention of the conversation piece, a (usually) small-scale portrait showing two or more people, often out of doors. The emphasis on the landscape here allows Gainsborough to display his skills as a painter of convincingly changing weather and naturalistic scenery, still a novelty at this time.