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Thomas Gainsborough (artist) British, 1727 - 1788 Master John Heathcote, c. 1771/1772 oil on canvas Overall: 127 x 101.2 cm (50 x 39 13/16 in.) framed: 159.4 x 133.3 cm (62 3/4 x 52 1/2 in.) Given in memory of Governor Alvan T. Fuller by The Fuller Foundation, Inc. 1961.2.1 On View |
Gainsborough, who never left England, devised an idiosyncratic style of rapidly improvised brushstrokes of multicolored paint, evident in his Master John Heathcote. This portrait, commissioned as a keepsake by aristocratic parents who recently had lost all their other children to an epidemic, shows the four- or five-year-old boy clutching wild flowers to suggest innocence.