Painting comes to market for first time in 250 years

LONDON (JP): A double portrait by Thomas Gainsborough of members of one of Suffolk's most important families is expected to fetch up to 1.2 million poundsterlings in a sale at Sotheby's on Wednesday, July 12, 1995.

The Cobbold family portrait, painted by Gainsborough in around 1750, shortly after he returned from London to his native Suffolk, is being sold by order of the executors of the late Patrick Cobbold. It will be offered in an important sale of British Pictures 1500-1850 with an estimate of 300,000-500,000 poundsterlings.

Until Mr. Cobbold's death in November last year, the painting hung in the home of the ancient Suffolk family that came to prominence in the early 18th century when they founded the celebrated brewery which bears their name in Ipswich.

The painting, a beautiful conversation piece featuring two young women in a landscape, is one of a remarkably small group of portraits of local landowners and friends of the artist which are now recognized as one of the glories of British painting in the 18th century.

It has appeared in all the major books on the artist and has been exhibited consistently from the Bicentenary exhibition in 1927 to English Pictures from Suffolk Houses at Agnews in 1980.

The Cobbold family prospered as brewers, became Lords of the Manor in 1812, and formed a banking partnership as Bacon, Cobbold and Tollemache which owned premises in the heart of Ipswich.

The portrait hung first at Hollywells, a large mansion surrounded by the ever-growing town, and the Glemham Hall, the great 16th century house in North Suffolk, family seat of Lord North.

Sotheby's expert David Moore-Gwyn said: "What makes the Cobbold portrait so attractive is Gainsborough's charmingly natural composition, free from artificially and without the constraints of the demands that would have been placed upon him by fashionable London sitters."

"It is this unaffected grace and charm that sets it alongside some of the great masterpieces of British art and it is a privilege to have been asked to sell it."

In style, the work is reminiscent of other conversation pieces by Gainsborough, most notably Mr. and Mrs. Andrews now in the National Gallery (sold through Sotheby's in 1960 for 130,000 pounds); the portrait of The Gravenor Family (sold by Sotheby's in 1972 for 280,000 pounds and now in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut) and the portrait of Peter Darnal Muilman, Charles Crockatt and William Keeble (sold by Sotheby's July 1993 for 1,079,500 pounds bought on behalf of Gainsborough's House, Sudbury and The Tate Gallery).