We now encounter Tim Rakewell and his wife in their late forties, strolling through the grounds of their mansion in a scene that echoes Thomas Gainsborough’s celebrated portrait of the landed gentry, Mr and Mrs Andrews (c. 1750). In the foreground, a tattered stag is being ravaged by wolves named “Tax,” “Social Change,” “Upkeep” and “Fuel Bills.” Behind a protest applies pressure on Tim to pay his taxes, while weeds encroach across the scene signalling the increasing difficulty he faces in sustaining his newly acquired lifestyle.

The palette of this tapestry is noticeably more subdued than in earlier works. This points to the growing ominousness of Tim’s situation and reflects the limits imposed by British cultural tradition in which true upper-class status remains an inherited privilege that cannot be fully acquired within a single lifetime.