Thomas Gainsborough, the English society portraitist of the 18th-century painted in 1754 the Gravenor Family resplendent in their upper-class clothing in a dark landscape.
The sheen from the dresses contrasts with and helps emphasize the descending browns and greys of the clouds, and helps the scene be seen as such, i.e. a stage for the leisure of the family.
Thomas Gainsborough’s The Gravenor Family is in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut.