Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture

This exhibition explores the relationship between works by period-defining English artist Thomas Gainsborough and fashion, a concept and industry that touched nearly every aspect of British society in the eighteenth century. The artist’s painted images were subject to the same forces of fashion as the people they depict. In Gainsborough’s world, the trappings, trade, and power of fashion were everywhere—from magazines to tailor shops, from the opera to promenades—and his portraits were at the heart of it all.

The museum’s first special exhibition dedicated to the artist—and the first devoted to Gainsborough’s portraiture ever held in New York—this show brings together over two dozen of Gainsborough’s most spectacular portraits from across North America and the United Kingdom, representing each stage of his four-decade career.

The exhibition takes place at the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021 from February 12 – May 25, 2026.

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