Sir William Pulteney (formerly Johnstone), fifth baronet

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727–1788

ca. 1772

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

In 1759, Thomas Gainsborough had established himself in the fashionable spa town of Bath, where he became the leading portrait painter and renowned for capturing a good likeness. This full-length portrait was among the last he made in Bath before he moved to London in 1774. A good marriage and an unexpected inheritance in 1767 had transformed the sitter, William Johnstone, from a struggling Scottish lawyer into Bath’s richest resident, and one of the wealthiest commoners in Britain. Adopting his wife’s name of Pulteney, he increased his landed wealth through careful investment in the Johnstone family’s commercial interests in India