The Tamesis
It’s easy to romanticize the past – especially when you see beautiful images with glamorous outfits. Such is the case with the paintings of Thomas Gainsborough. The 18th-century English painter’s portraits debut in the “Gainsborough: Fashion in Portrait” exhibition at the Frick Museum in New York on February 12.
The artist’s subject matter is an important topic that the museum explores alongside themes such as class and power. The overlap with New York Fashion Week is incidental, but also telling. Portraits are time-intensive, foreshadowing prosperity, and the subjects are often dressed in their “Sunday best” clothes. In Gainsborough’s day, it was not just the cut of a garment but the materials from which it was made that conveyed status and class. The painter’s subjects included stylish, tasteful women such as Scottish courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott, a precursor to today’s influencers, who would sometimes change outfits between performances in the hope of attracting the attention of street style photographers.
To bridge past and present, we paired Gainsborough’s portraits with fleeting runway images from recent seasons that speak to us over time. Although the goal here is not accuracy but resonanceit’s really interesting to think about why designers and museum curators are now exploring the Age of Enlightenment and its Rococo style (which later gave way to the Revolution). (Overlapping with the end of the V&A’s “Marie Antoinette Style” exhibition is “Fashion in the 18th Century: A Legacy of Imagination” at Palazzo Galliera.) Maybe it has something to do with going all out. On you!
“Gainsborough: Fashion in Portrait” will be on view at the Frick Collection from February 12 to May 25, 2026.
