This family portrait is the largest painting in Bath by Bath's greatest artist, Thomas Gainsborough. Gainsborough moved to Bath from Ipswich in the late 1750s and took up residence by the Abbey. The portrait commemorates the marriage of George Byam, recently arrived from Antigua, to local Gloucestershire girl Louisa Bathurst. Several years after it was first painted, Gainsborough altered the portrait by adding the wealthy couple's daughter Selina and updating their fashionable clothes.
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