How Country Life helped track down a lost masterpiece by Gainsborough

In July 2015, Dr Lucy Peltz of the National Portrait Gallery in London had a clever idea to try and find the whereabouts of several paintings that the artist Thomas Gainsborough had done of various family members.

Years of looking via the usual channels hadn't yielded results, and hardly surprising considering that some of the paintings hadn't been seen in public for well over a century.

Thus is was that Dr Peltz decided to try writing a letter to Country Life:

The letter was a huge success – the owner of the pictures saw the letter and contacted the gallery.

'Representatives of the owners of the painting discovered that we were looking for it after we put the notice in and got in touch with us very late in the day,' Dr Peltz told The Times.

So well did it work, in fact, that a few months later, in September, Dr Peltz wrote another letter:

Once again, the pleae bore fruit – and the unfinished painting of Gainsborough's daughter Margaret is now one of the highlights of the 'Gainsborough Family Album' exhibition currently on at the NPG, which runs until February 3.

Credit: Two Hacks by George Stubbs (Parker Gallery)

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