Thomas Gainsborough – Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, 1748-9, 70 x 119 cm. The church whose tower is seen in the centre background is St. Peter’s, Sudbury, where Robert Andrews and Frances Mary Carter were married in 1748. Mr. Andrews nonchalantly has his gun under his arm. Mrs. Andrews, ramrod straight and neatly composed, has a space in her lap that may have been meant to hold a book or a bird her husband had shot. Gainsborough beautifully paints the gold and green of fields and woodland, the supple curves of fertile land meeting the stately clouds. The acid blue hooped skirt almost, but not quite, rhymes with the curved bench back, her silk shoes point like the bench seat, while Mr. Andrews’s substantial shoes point like the tree roots.