© Tate
This conversation piece, or small-scale group portrait, is one of Francis Hayman's finest works. It shows the famous author Samuel Richardson with his second wife, Elizabeth Leake, and their daughters. It was commissioned by Richardson just after the publication of his immensely popular novel Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, a seminal work in the history of English literature. On the far right is Elizabeth Midwinter, later Lady Gosling, who was living with the Richardsons when Pamela was being written. Hayman was a close friend of William Hogarth and a leading figure in the London artistic community, and this work exemplifies the type of outdoor conversation piece he was producing, which so inspired Thomas Gainsborough and other British artists of the next generation.
