Thomas Gainsborough, R.A.
Sudbury 1727 – London 1788

Portrait of Mr. Coke of Brookhill

oil on canvas

36"×28" (91.4 cm×71.1 cm)

PROVENANCE:
By descent to Roger Sacheverell Coke Esq., of Brookhill Hall, Derbyshire; Christie’s, July 22, 1938, lot 64, sold for £99/15s. where bought by; Freeman; Findlay Galleries, New York & Kansas City, 1940 from whom purchased by; Mrs. Helen Nelson, Kansas City until 2003

LITERATURE: E.K. Waterhouse, "Preliminary Check List of Portraits by Thomas Gainsborough", The Walpole Society, vol. xxxiii, Oxford, 1953, p. 23 E.K. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, London, 1966, p. 60 no. 158

NOTE: Dated by Ellis Waterhouse to the 1760s, this portrait of a young gentleman of the Coke family was painted in the fashionable spa town of Bath, where Gainsborough had moved in 1759 from his native Suffolk. Bath attracted the noble and the rich in droves resulting in a steady flow of commissions for portrait painters. The resort town was described by Mrs. Delany in 1760 as "the busiest idle place in the world." (1)

The sitter has traditionally been identified as Richard Coke of Brookhill, Derbyshire (2). He was presumably a visitor to Bath during one of the spring or autumn seasons, who like many visitors sat to Gainsborough for his portrait. When he arrived at Bath at the age of thirty-one, Gainsborough was an artist of modest reputation but when he left sixteen years later, he was recognized as one of Europe’s foremost painters. His success enabled him between 1758 and 1774 to raise his prices steadily from fifteen guineas for a half-length (or fifty by forty inch canvas), to sixty guineas (3). The chief accomplishment of his portraiture during these years was to graft the elegance and refinement of Van Dyck, whose work he had seen at nearby houses such as Wilton, onto his own native, informal style. The present portrait is a fine example of Gainsborough’s adoption of a more "flashy" portrait style with the strong colors of the red in the sitter’s coat contrasting with his blue waistcoat. The evidence of pentimenti around the tricorn hat and right sleeve attest to the speed and bravura with which the artist painted. Mr. Coke’s costume may be that of a military regiment or militia as many such units were posted in and around Bath during this period.

The Cokes were an ancient Derbyshire family who had owned the Elizabethan house and its estate, Brookhill Hall in Pinxton for generations. The sitter is almost certainly a son of D’Ewes Coke (d. 1751). He married firstly, Frances, daughter and co-heiress of William Coke of Trusley, by whom he had an eldest son, George (1725-59) and two other sons. He married secondly, Catherine, daughter of Francis Hurt of Alderwasley, by whom he had a further four sons and five daughters. The estate and house at Brookhill was inherited by George Coke’s eldest son, Rev. D’Ewes Coke (1747-1811) who was painted in a group portrait with his wife, Hannah and Daniel Parker Coke, M.P. by Joseph Wright of Derby that dates to c.1782 (Derby Museum and Art Gallery). The present portrait descended to the last male heir at Brookhill, the composer Roger Sacheverell Coke who sold it at auction in 1938.

(1) Llanover, 1861, III, p. 606, Mrs. Delany to her sister Mrs. Dewes, October 28, 1760.

(2) Waterhouse (op. cit., 1966, p. 60) mentions that there was a vague family tradition that the sitter was a Byng who married into the Coke family but there is no evidence to support this.

(3) It is likely that the present portrait was originally painted as a half-length but that it was trimmed at some point in its history to its present size.