Why a Booktrail?
1756: A sister will do everything in her power to protect her sibling
The Painter’s Daughters
What you need to know before your trail
Sisters Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are the best of friends and do everything together. They spy on their father as he paints, they rankle their mother as she manages the books, they tear barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly has had a tendency to forget who she is, to fall into mental confusion, and Peggy knows instinctively that no one must find out.
When the family move to Bath, the sisters are thrown into the whirl of polite society, where the merits of marriage and codes of behaviour are crystal clear, and secrets much harder to keep. As Peggy goes to greater lengths to protect her sister from the threat of an asylum, she finds herself falling in love, and their precarious situation is soon thrown catastrophically off course. The discovery of a betrayal forces Peggy to question all she has done for Molly – and whether any one person can truly change the fate of another.
Locations
Reset- England -Suffolk - Ipswich
- A: Bridge Street
- B: Foundation St
- C: River Orwell
- D: Gainsborough Community Library
- England - Somerset - Bath
- E: The Circus
Travel Guide
Ipswich and Bath to tell the story of Gainsborough
Gainsborough was one of, it not, the leading portrait painter in England in the later 18th century.
He was a founding member of the Royal Academy and was the favourite painter of the king.
He was born in Sudbury, Suffolk and was the son of a wool manufacturer. He did in fact live in Ipswich before moving to Bath and then to London where he had originally trained.
He painted landscape and rustic scenes and his most famous paintings include The Blue Boy; Mr and Mrs Andrews; Portrait of Mrs. Graham; Mary and Margaret: The Painter’s Daughters.
BookTrail Boarding Pass:
Destination: Ipswich and Bath Author/guide: Emily Howes Departure Time: 1756
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