What kinds of people appear in Thomas Gainsborough’s fancy pictures?

In Thomas Gainsborough’s "fancy pictures," which he painted during the 1780s, the subjects are idealized, full-sized portraits of country children and peasants.1

These works were painted from models and reflect a nostalgic, romanticized vision of rural life, such as in his painting The Cottage Girl with a Bowl of Milk. While these figures were inspired by his earlier, smaller rustic Suffolk figures, Gainsborough may have been further encouraged to develop this style after seeing the work of the 17th-century Spanish painter Bartolomé Murillo.1