The Easel

17th February 2026

“Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture” Goes on View At The Frick Collection

Celia McGee | Galerie | 10th February 2026

When Gainsborough moved to Bath, his studio was next door to an upmarket health spa where he could observe the latest fashions. Those fashions can now be seen to have reflected important social changes. Britain’s wealth accumulation in the later 1700’s was immense, due to slavery, plantations, banking and factories. A new middle class wanted what the aristocracy had, including beautiful clothes and flattering Gainsborough portraits. It seems he tired of all the “upward striving”, calling it “the curs’d Face Business”.

10th February 2026

The private lives of Gwen John

Laura Cumming | The Observer | 7th February 2026

A former lover of Rodin, John’s biography is well known. A large retrospective casts her in a different light. Her many interior studies, showing silent women in small, silent rooms, hint at her real interest – inner experience. Her subjects are often dressed in blue, are seated and appear lost in thought. Are these portraits or, rather, studies of the state of introspection? John described herself as “a seer of strange beauties, a teller of harmonies.” One writer says, “a great modern artist”.

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