Mrs Elizabeth Moody with her sons Samuel and Thomas

Elizabeth Johnson was the first wife of Samuel Moody. She died, aged 26, in December 1782 leaving two sons, Samuel, then twenty months old, and Thomas, eight months. The children must have been added after their mother's death - probably, from the evidence of their apparent ages, in 1784/5.

On 23 February 1786 their father remarried Mary Paterson (c.1767-1820). Thomas's diary is said to reveal an aversion to his step-mother and by giving this Gainsborough to a public gallery he would have prevented it from passing to her four children. The portrait was probably painted on the occasion of Moody's first marriage in 1779. The 'quasi-Turkish' ensemble of hairstyle and costume is of the late 1770s and the original elegant pose compares closely with Gainsborough's 'Mrs Henry Beaufoy' shown at the Royal Academy in 1780.

The painting is typical of Gainsborough’s late manner, where glamorous women walk through sketchy landscapes in superb costumes.