On an early summer’s day in 1775, somewhere near Hammersmith, West London, highwaymen attacked a stagecoach and relieved the passengers inside of valuables. We know the details because (through the efforts of a privately hired ‘thief-taker’) the highwaymen were tracked down, tried and hanged. But it’s the passengers whose names stand out. Among them were three friends: the painter Thomas Gainsborough, and composers Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel. That this snapshot of history caught them travelling together was no accident, because they were often together – joined by a shared love of music that with Bach and Abel was professional but, in the case of Gainsborough, a deep-rooted amateur obsession.
One of the great portrait painters of the 18th century, Gainsborough nonetheless complained of being ‘sick of Portraits’, wishing ‘very much to take up my Viol da Gamba and walk off to some sweet Village where I can … enjoy the fag End of Life inAnd over time, the comfort embraced a theorbo, violin and harp, growing to the dimensions of a small orchestra.
