A father showering his daughters with love is nothing new, but Thomas Gainsborough takes it to the next level by immortalizing his daughters in a painting. 

Gainsborough’s The Painter’s Daughters With A Cat is one of dozens of paintings featuring either his friends, his daughters, or other members of his family. As you look at the painting, you can see the youthful innocence in his daughter’s eyes, as they hold each other in a loving embrace. Even though they aren’t smiling, they look happy and cared for. As you take your eyes away from the focal point of the painting however, you’ll begin to see that it isn’t finished. Key areas like their torsos and arms are mere sketches compared to the attention to detail of their faces. You can even see a ghostly cat sketched out on the chest of Mary on the right.

For better or for worse, this was one of Gainsborough’s prominent traits as an artist. A lot of his most famous works are unfinished just like this one. So the fact that The Painter’s Daughter With A Cat falls into that category isn’t a sign that he didn’t care about his daughters. My guy just couldn’t be bothered to focus on what he was currently working on 100%. Any true artist can understand the impulse to always look to the next thing. Gainsborough also often painted rapidly. It was said that he could finish painting a face in just an hour, but after that...he’d kinda just move on.

Gainsborough was known as a landscape painter, but he painted his family often. The Painter’s Daughters With A Cat is a family snapshot before recording your children for posterity became commonplace with the advent of photography. Perhaps this is why the faces were more important to render in detail than any other part of the scene. What Gainsborough did with his daughters, painting them through the years as they grew up, provided them with the unique gift of being able to look back and recall their childhood over time in an era when most people could only rely on their memories. If that’s not proof of a father’s love, I don’t know what is.