Organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Curator of European Painting, Sculpture and Drawings, Benedict Leca, Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman is the first to focus specifically on the notions of modernity and femininity in Georgian England from the perspective of Gainsborough’s groundbreaking portraits of women.

Featuring sixteen paintings – ten full-length and six half-length portraits – Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman opens in Cincinnati and will travel to the San Diego Museum of Art. The exhibition coincides with the restoration of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s iconic portrait of Ann Ford (later Mrs. Philip Thicknesse), presented after its first comprehensive restoration in nearly thirty years. The show also features a choice selection of period dresses to contextualize Gainsborough’s portraits while affording a view of the material accessories of the “modern woman.”

Fine Arts Fund Partners

Convergys Corporation

P&G

Western & Southern Financial Group

Sponsors

The Alpaugh Foundation

The Robert Lehman Foundation

The Harold C. Schott Foundation

The Selz Foundation

A Friend of the Art Museum

ArtsWave Partners

Convergys Corporation

P&G

Western & Southern Financial Group

LENDING INSTITUTIONS

Philadelphia Museum of Art

National Gallery of Art, Washington

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The National Gallery, London

The J. Paul Getty Museum

Krannert Art Museum

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens

Worcester Art Museum

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tate Britain

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Image: Thomas Gainsborough, Ann Ford (later Mrs. Philip Thicknesse), 1760, oil on canvas, 77 5/8 x 53 1/8 in. (197.2 x 134.9 cm), Cincinnati Art Museum, Bequest of Mary M. Emery (1927.396)