Five years of fruitless searching had left the National Portrait Gallery almost abandoning hope of finding a lost Gainsborough painting, but the letters page of Country Life came to the rescue.
‘Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist’s Daughter, Playing a Cittern’, by Thomas Gainsborough. Private collection via the National Portrait Gallery. Photo by Matthew Hollow.
In July 2015, Dr Lucy Peltz of the National Portrait Gallery in London had a clever idea to try and find the whereabouts of several paintings that the artist Thomas Gainsborough had done of various family members.
Years of looking via the usual channels hadn’t yielded results, and hardly surprising considering that some of the paintings hadn’t been seen in public for well over a century.
Thus is was that Dr Peltz decided to try writing a letter to Country Life:
The letter was a huge success – the owner of the pictures saw the letter and contacted the gallery.
‘Representatives of the owners of the painting discovered that we were looking for it after we put the notice in and got in touch with us very late in the day,’ Dr Peltz told The Times.
So well did it work, in fact, that a few months later, in September, Dr Peltz wrote another letter:
Once again, the pleae bore fruit – and the unfinished painting of Gainsborough’s daughter Margaret is now one of the highlights of the ‘Gainsborough Family Album‘ exhibition currently on at the NPG, which runs until February 3.
Long-neglected ‘copy’ turns out to be original Stubbs worth £750,000
Gallery owner Archie Parker thought something was amiss when he came across this painting in an online sale catalogue, and
A library in Bath transformed into a bright and beautiful room to think, play the piano and just enjoy the view
Nicola Harding and Christopher Howe joined forces to transform this first-floor library into a serenely elegant sitting room. Arabella Youens
In Focus: The plantsman-turned-artist who found art in flowers, and painted from corner to corner
Cedric Morris's striking still life images have been largely forgotten for three decades, but three new shows are ending that
