Thomas Gainsborough FRSA (christened 14 May 1727 – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver in Suffolk, and, in 1740, left home to study art in London with Hubert Gravelot, Francis Hayman, and William Hogarth. In 1746, he married Margaret Burr, and they became parents of two daughters. He moved to Bath in 1759 where fashionable society patronised him, and he began exhibiting in London. In 1769, he became a founding member of the Royal Academy, but his relationship with the organization was thorny and he sometimes withdrew his work from exhibition. Gainsborough moved to London in 1774, and painted portraits of the king and queen, but the king was obliged to name as royal painter Gainsborough's rival Joshua Reynolds. In his last years, Gainsborough painted relatively simple landscapes and is credited (with Richard Wilson) as the originator of the 18th century British landscape school. Gainsborough died of cancer in 1788 and is interred at St. Anne's Church, Kew, Surrey. He painted quickly and his later pictures are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. He preferred landscapes to portraits.
Gainsborough was noted for the speed with which he applied paint, and he worked more from observations of nature (and of human nature) than from application of formal academic rules. The poetic sensibility of his paintings caused Constable to say, "On looking at them, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them." Gainsbrough said, "I'm sick of portraits, and wish very much to take my viol-da-gam and walk off to some sweet village, where I can paint landskips(sic) and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease." His liking for landscapes is shown in the way he merged figures of the portraits with the scenes behind them. His later work was characterised by a light palette and easy, economical strokes.
His most famous works, Portrait of Mrs. Graham; Mary and Margaret: The Painter's Daughters; William Hallett and His Wife Elizabeth, nee Stephen, known asThe Morning Walk; and Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher, display the unique individuality of his subjects. Gainsborough's only known assistant was his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont. In the last year of his life he collaborated with John Hoppner in painting a full length portrait of Charlotte, Countess Talbot.
Film
An interesting fact that Gainsborough's only known assistant was his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont.
ReplyDeleteHe was one of the originators of the eighteenth-century British landscape school and the dominant British portraitist of the second half of the 18th c. His liking for landscapes is shown in the way he merged figures of the portraits with the scenes behind them.
ReplyDeleteI like his picture “Two Daughters with a Cat”. It’s very tender and touching.
ReplyDeleteGainsborough had moved with his family from Ipswich to Bath in the autumn of 1759 and this work may therefore have been painted in Bath rather than in Ipswich. The painting is unfinished, but the outlines of a cat whose tail is being pulled can be seen on the lap of the elder girl