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Full length, seated on a balustrade, wearing brown suits, building a house of cards Oil on canvas 155 by 129.5 cm;. 61 by 51 in. This charming, beautifully constructed portrait is one of four major works commissioned by the Truman family. The first was the magnificent portrait of Sir Benjamin Truman (1711-1780), son of the founder of the Truman Brewery in Spitalfields. That noble portrait, now in the Tate Gallery, was painted in Bath in the early 1770's towards the end of Truman's life, and portrayed the bluff tradesman with a directness and lack of artifice reminiscent of many of Reynolds's great full length portraits. Truman was clearly delighted with the result and commissioned Gainsborough to paint full length portraits of his two granddaughters, the children of his only daughter Frances who had married Henry Read. The portrait of Henrietta, wife of John Mears, is now in the Huntingdon Museum and the portrait of Frances, who married William Villebois, is in the Cowdray collection. The final Truman commission was for this portrait of the two Villebois sons, John and Henry. The portrait of the Villebois boys dates from circa 1780 and foreshadows the celebrated "fancy pictures" which were the predominant feature of Gainsborough's work in the final phase of his life. It is generally considered that such pictures were inspired by one of Murillos's paintings of the "Child St. John" which Gainsborough saw in the late 1770's, and the attractive subjects which combined portrait and landscape in a perfect fusion became enormously popular. The artist depicts the two small boys not in an unnatural formal pose, but playing a game of cards on the steps of a country house (possibly the Truman house in Hertfordshire). The effect is wholly natural as if the artist has observed them at play without being noticed, and yet the composition is cleverly based on a triangle, loosely echoing the shape of the pile of cards. As the catalogue of the Gainsborough exhibition in Paris points out, the position of the boy's hands and the column behind help form a bond between them. It appears from family records that Benjamin Truman pinned his hopes for the future of the business on these two small boys. On his death in 1780 he directed that his paintings at Popes in Hertfordshire should be removed to Spitalfields and remain there "so long as any of my family have any connection or concern in the Trade now carrying on there by me". In 1866 a dispute arose between Henry Villebois and the Brewery as to the ownership of the picutres, and it seems that the family prevailed as in 1878 the pictures were lent by Henry Villebois to the Royal Academy. On Henry Villebois's death in 1886, his solicitors wrote that "Mrs Villebois has decided to purchase the picture of the two Boys for the sum of L8000, and the executors of Mr F.R.O. Villebois and Mr Henry Villebois senr, will now have to dispose of the remaining picture of Sir Benjamin Truman". The brewery bought Truman's portrait of L1000 (the two female portraits having presumably already been sold), and the family later sold the portrait of the small boys to America. PROVENANCE By family descent until 1886 when, on the death of Henry Villebois Jnr. the picture was bought by Mrs Villebois for L8,000; With Duveen 1923; Carll Tucker by 1926 and thence by descent until sold the Tucker sale, Plaza Art Galleries, New York November 11, 1977, (75), bt. Agnew and sold to the present owners EXHIBITED Royal Academy, 1878, no, 272; Grosvenor Gallery, Thomas Gainsborough, 1885, no. 177; Detroit, Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of English Paintings, 1926; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, A Survey of British Paintings, May-June 1938; New York World's Fair, Masterpieces of Art, 1940, no. 157; Grand Palais, Paris, Gainsborough, 1981, no. 54; On loan to the Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, 1981-1992 LITERATURE Sir Walter Armstrong, Gainsborough, 1898, p. 203; Sir Walter Armstrong, Gainsborough, 1904, p. 281; E.K. Waterhouse, "Preliminary Check List of Portraits by Thomas Gainsborough", Walpole Society, 1953, Vol XXXIII, p. 108; Ellis Waterhouse, Gainsborough, 1958, no. 675, pl.222.