Focus on Mr and Mrs Andrews and explain the Sitters and setting.
Robert Andrews, the male sitter, was a member of the landed gentry, and this is very much apparent in Gainsborough's work. Although it is probable the family money came from being a landlord, Robert's father also lent substantial amounts of money, particularly to other gentry, at significant interest rates. This included the sum of £30,000 to Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1743, for which he became Remembrancer. He had a London house in Grosvenor Square in Mayfair, and also owned ships and engaged in trade with the colonies of the British Empire. Robert himself was born in Bulmer, Essex in 1725, and after attending Sudbury Grammar School at the same time as Gainsborough (two years younger) did, went on to University College, Oxford. His father purchased him an estate, and secured a bride, in a successful attempt to further integrate Robert into the upper classes. In 1763, after his father's death, he would take over the family business.  By 1750 he owned almost 3,000 acres, including most of the land visible in the painting.
His wife sitting beside him is Frances Mary Carter, who was brought up in the same parish of Bulmer, and was "not quite the girl next door, but probably the nearest marriageable girl of his own class".  She was betrothed to Andrews at 15 or 16 years old. They were married in Sudbury, on 10 November 1748: he was 22, she 16. Her father also owned businesses as well as property, and had a "share of a house in the City of London" as well as a country base at Ballingdon Hall, just over the River Stour from Sudbury, and so then in Essex.  Her family had made their money in the drapery business, and by buying the estate avoided the collapse of the textile industry.
The Andrews' estate, Auberies, in Bulmer Tye, North Essex, is just some four miles from Sudbury, and bordered Frances' father's Ballingdon estate. It was probably part of her dowry or bought with it, and had been bought between their marriage and when the painting was done. The church glimpsed in the middle of the work is All Saints, Sudbury, where the couple had been married. The small tower in the left background is that of Holy Trinity Church in Long Melford. On the right hand side the barns of the home farm of Frances's childhood home at Ballington Hall can be seen; such an identifiable and accurately depicted location is unusual in Gainsborough's work, and was probably a specific request of the sitters. Their house, also called Auberies, would be in their sight in the portrait, behind the viewer to his right, and much closer than the picture implies. The couple had nine children, and when Frances Andrews died at 48 in 1780, Robert remarried; he died in 1806 at 80.
The couple are buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew's Church in Bulmer, whilst a memorial to them hangs in the church itself.
The Andrews wear different dress, but both are more equal in their informality than many observers have thought. Robert is as informal as a man in his position was likely to be seen, even on his own estate, in a loose hunting coat with dangling bags for gunpowder and shot. Frances wears an outfit which in fact is an informal summer suit (as we would now call it) with a separate skirt and jacket, not a dress, of a light blue similar to those that Gainsborough often gave his early female sitters, including her mother, and which may not represent any actual garment of that colour. She wears informal mules and a straw hat. However, their poses are certainly different, with Robert's nonchalant pose not matched by Frances, who is "sitting bolt upright". Apart from considerations of corsetry, and the poise expected of ladies, her figure was probably painted from a dressed artist's mannequin. The rococo bench on which she sits must be made of wood at this date, and it is thought that this was an invention of Gainsborough's, drawing on his period with Gravelot.Gainsborough had painted (probably in London) Frances's parents in his Mr and Mrs Carter of Bullingdon House, Bulmer, Essex in about 1747–1748 (now Tate Britain). This painting makes an interesting comparison with that of the Andrews in many respects. Frances Jamineau, who became Mrs Carter, was of French parentage, and whether she and her husband were really as disproportionate in size as Gainsborough paints them is unknown.The neat parallel rows of corn produced by Jethro Tull's revolutionary and controversial seed drill show that this is a thoroughly modern and efficient farm. Robert was a keen farmer, whose letter in 1768 to the agriculturalist Arthur Young "On the Smut in Wheat" was published in Young's Annals of Agriculture. As such details are not typical of Gainsborough's landscapes, but rather anticipate the work of John Constable who was born nearby some 25 years later, it seems likely that they were Robert Andrews's idea. In fact the whole wheat field has been brought far closer to the house than would really have been the case; it is "invented, or transposed from further away. If read literally, the sheaves of corn would be thrusting through the porch of Auberies itself".The painting has been described as unusual, as an outdoor conversation piece showing the subjects against an agricultural background rather than in the gardens of their own houses, but this is also seen in other early Gainsboroughs.  A group portrait of his from about 1754 shows the parents and two daughters of The Gravenor Family (illustrated below) with a square version of a similar composition with two oaks on the left behind the standing father and seated mother, and the daughters to their right, close up to the edge of standing corn. A distant view can be seen above the corn, though Mr Gravenor was a "successful apothecary" in Ipswich, who had just entered local politics, and seems not to have owned either the corn or the view.  This is now in the Yale Center for British Art, who also own Gainsborough's Major Dade in Shooting Dress (c. 1755), of another very relaxed Suffolk gentleman shooting on his farmland with two dogs and dead birds.The oak tree in front of which the Andrews stand has several connotations beyond the choice of location: Englishness, stability and continuity, and a sense of successive generations taking over the family business. The landed gentry had been compared to the oak, holding Britain together.  The oak tree still survives, now considerably larger.
apothecary Grosvenor Square Long Melford River Stour Essex Bulmer Tye corsetry mannequin right Frances Andrews seed drill British Empire landed gentry Sudbury Grammar School Mayfair rococo dowry Frederick, Prince of Wales Yale Center for British Art mules Tate Britain Jethro Tull Robert Andrews Bulmer, Essex Ballingdon Ipswich oak tree Remembrancer Arthur Young John Constable home farm secured a bride left acre City of London University College, Oxford