THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. | Portrait of John Richards, three-quarter-length, wearing a green coat and holding a tricorn hat

Miss Catherine Heaslop, Isle of Wight, by 1949;

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 7 July 1965, lot 113, where acquired by the father of the present owner. 

E.K. Waterhouse, 'Check list of portraits by Thomas Gainsborough. Identified portraits', in The Walpole Society, vol. XXXIII, Oxford 1953, p. 91;

On the House: The newsletter of Gainsborough's House Society and the Friends of Gainsborough's House, Issue 42, January 2002, p. 4, reproduced (detail); 

H. Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough. The portraits, fancy pictures and copies after Old Masters, New Haven and London 2019, vol. 2, pp. 711–12, cat. no. 769, reproduced in colour p. 712. 

Painted in Bath, circa 1763, the sitter has tentatively been identified as the cabinet maker, John Richards (d.1773), who lived in Holborn before moving to 16 Kensington Square in 1760. The artist made a number of alterations during the gestation of the portrait, including to the cuffs, which were originally much wider, and the waistcoat, which was shorter, with the hem cut at a sharper angle.