Early photographic work exhibited in 'Being There', No.1 Royal Crescent, Bath

Early photographic work from Billingham series 'Ray's a Laugh' was exhibited in 'Being There,' No. 1 Royal Crescent, Bath, UK, curated by Ingrid Swenson (14 September 2024 – 23 February 2025)

'Being There' featured four recently acquired Thomas Gainsborough portraits alongside 18 British contemporary artists working in portraiture today. The contemporary art was selected by guest curator Ingrid Swenson MBE.

The exhibition was the first in The Gallery at No.1 Royal Crescent’s new programme of contemporary art exhibitions.

The title 'Being There' invited visitors to reflect on the experience of artists and their sitters or subject in the act of making artwork, and to consider what similarities and differences there may be for the role of the artist in Gainsborough’s time and today.

Besides Billingham, other artists were Michael Armitage, Frank Auerbach, Sarah Ball, Glenn Brown, Brian Dawn Chalkley, Kaye Donachie, Paul Graham, Maggi Hambling, David Hockney, Claudette Johnson, Chantal Joffe, Lucy Jones, Joy Labinjo, Melanie Manchot, Celia Paul, Gillian Wearing and Shaqúelle Whyte

The four Thomas Gainsborough portraits (circa 1763), were housed in their original carved Carlo Maratta frames and depicted members of the prominent Tugwell family from Bradford on Avon: clothier Humphrey Tugwell, his wife, Elizabeth and sons William and Thomas.

It is rare for a set of four portraits of members of the same family by Thomas Gainsborough to survive together. Rarer still is the fact that the sitters are not aristocratic visitors to fashionable Bath, but middle-class manufacturers from a small West Country town.