This handwritten receipt by Thomas Gainsborough is for the sum of 15 guineas received for a half-length portrait (which was 50 x 40 inches canvas). The portrait, now lost, was painted during the period he was living in Ipswich in the 1750s. The sitter was Daniel Wryth (1729-85), the brother-in-law of Gainsborough’s close friend Samuel Kilderbee (Samuel (1725-1813) and his wife Mary were painted several times by Gainsborough).
Written just prior to his move to Bath, it is a good example of Gainsborough’s growing reputation and ambition and the only evidence for his charge for a half-length at this period. It was first discovered, according to Ellis Waterhouse, in a lawyer’s office at Bury St Edmunds in April 1928 but since been lost sight of. It can now be displayed in its most appropriate context and play its part in achieving the mission of Gainsborough’s House: ‘To promote the wider knowledge, appreciation and enjoyment of the art of Thomas Gainsborough within the context of the eighteenth century and the inspiration of the Suffolk landscape and to preserve and enhance Gainsborough’s House and its collections for the benefit of present and future generations.’
