The Painter’s Daughters

Reviewed by James Phillips

Emily Howes  (Phoenix Orion Publishing: 2024)

Gainsborough may be one of the nation's most renowned painters, but how much do you know about his life? I should imagine precious little. We are delighted to be welcoming Emily Howes in October who has revealed the man and his family in her debut novel, The Painter’s Daughters. Howes has just published Mrs Dickens to great acclaim and we expect her to talk about this book too.  

The novel follows Gainsborough’s daughters, told through the eyes of his youngest, Peggy, or ‘Captain’ as he called her, with the naivety of youth giving way to deep loyalty and sacrifice. It begins in Ipswich, before the family moves to Bath to further his career as a portrait artist, commanding the attention of the great and the rich of society, and going on to achieve the height of popularity.

A sweeping coming of age tale, it explores the family's trials, tribulations and secrets. Howes uses colour, just as Gainsborough did, to capture not only light against darkness, but in all its variety ‘I have always loved colours. It is like each changes the way you feel’. The narrator understands them, despite not inheriting her father’s talent, and allows us a vivid, kaleidoscopic exploration into her world.

Howes’ great triumph in this novel is showing how much Gainsborough owed to his family, from balancing the books to selling paintings, and how much they sacrificed for him. With Peggy’s sister Molly suffering from an illness, you will be torn by sympathy for all characters, in a time where women only had security through men, and the family were perilously reliant on his skill. 

The novel is also in part a love letter to the Suffolk countryside, and an ode to childhood, from picnics by the river Orwell to blackberry picking down country lanes. But too, it captures the thrum and vitality of the city, from Bath to London, the filth, the sludge, and the characters of the streets. The settings this family experienced are triumphantly painted into being as if you yourself are there, hearing the viola de gamba, witnessing the anguish, or watching the great artist himself. There are clear depictions throughout of known Gainsborough works that you can look up to track this extraordinary tale and gain from looking more closely.

Whilst this can’t be cast as a biography, Howes presents an absorbing and readable portrayal of the eighteenth century, and sheds new light onto Gainsborough as a man and an artist. Howes captures swathes of time, daubing many emotions and highlighting tremulous family loyalty, but the pentimento of secrets is everpresent. Adjacent to Gainsborough’s brush, it is a masterpiece of the pen, and is a novel well worth reading to discover the family behind a national figure, and with tender links to our home of Suffolk.

Emily Howes will be talking to Suffolk Book League at an event on Wednesday 14 October 2026.

You can buy tickets on the website here: Emily Howes | Suffolk Book League