A young man reclining on a bank beneath a tree, possibly a self-portrait

There are very few figure drawings that have been preserved from the early stages of Gainsborough’s career and this drawing is surely the most finished. Given the long-limbed appearance of this young man John Hayes suggested that the artist used a lay figure as a model. The format of a figure, or a group of figures, placed around the trunk of a mature tree with smaller distant trees placed to one side is a format that Gainsborough uses in several contemporary drawings. A pencil drawing in the Morgan Library, New York is perhaps the best-known example of this compositional format (Hayes, op.cit. 1970, pp. 131–32, no. 72, pl. 374), albeit lacking the finish of the present sheet. The present drawing belonged to Dr Geib who also owned a portrait of an unidentified sitter that he presented to the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York (Hugh Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough: The Portraits, Fancy Pictures and Copies after Old Masters, New Haven and London, 2019, pp. 908–9, no. 984, repr. col.). Both the painting and the drawing date from about 1747 and they share many similarities in their compositions. Both show the young artist’s unbridled ambition and his energetic enthusiasm.
At this point in his career commissions were scarce and Gainsborough may have used his own features for this drawing. Comparing the physiognomy in the sheet with the near contemporary portrait of the artist with his wife and first daughter, Margaret, in the National Gallery (Belsey, op.cit., pp. 352–53, no. 368, repr. col.), the features of the man - long nose, arched eyebrows and oval face - are very similar, so it is tempting to conclude that the present drawing is a (partial) self-portrait, an idea supported by the unusually high finish.
We are grateful to Hugh Belsey for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.