Mrs Andrews’s lap

SIR – I wonder whether the unfinished space on Mrs Andrews’s lap in Gainsborough’s painting (report, October 10) was really for a child yet to be born.

Could it rather have been for a dead pheasant, one we are meant to imagine has just been shot by her husband? There is what seems to be the outline of a tail feather there.

Maybe both sitters and Gainsborough were agreed on the pheasant, until someone pointed out that the stooked sheaves of wheat on the right imply an August or perhaps a September scene, while pheasant shooting only begins in

October. Roger Hudson

London W8