Jump to content
 







Main menu
   


Navigation  



Main page
Contents
Current events
Random article
About Wikipedia
Contact us
Donate
 




Contribute  



Help
Learn to edit
Community portal
Recent changes
Upload file
 








Search  

































Create account

Log in
 









Create account
 Log in
 




Pages for logged out editors learn more  



Contributions
Talk
 



















Contents

   



(Top)
 


1 Youth and training  





2 Career  



2.1  Suffolk  





2.2  Bath  





2.3  London  







3 Technique  





4 Reputation  





5 Popular culture  





6 Gallery  





7 See also  





8 Further reading  





9 References  





10 External links  














Thomas Gainsborough






العربية
Aymar aru
Беларуская
Български
Brezhoneg
Català
Чӑвашла
Čeština
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti
Ελληνικά
Español
Esperanto
Euskara
فارسی
Français
Frysk
Galego

Հայերեն
Hrvatski
Ido
Italiano
עברית

Қазақша
Lëtzebuergesch
Lietuvių
Magyar
Македонски

مصرى

Nederlands

Norsk bokmål
Norsk nynorsk
Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча
Polski
Português
Română
Runa Simi
Русский
Scots
Seeltersk
Simple English
کوردی
Српски / srpski
Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog

Тоҷикӣ
Türkçe
Українська
Winaray



 

Edit links
 









Article
Talk
 

















Read
Edit
View history
 








Tools
   


Actions  



Read
Edit
View history
 




General  



What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Cite this page
Get shortened URL
Download QR code
Wikidata item
 




Print/export  



Download as PDF
Printable version
 




In other projects  



Wikimedia Commons
Wikiquote
Wikisource
 
















Appearance
   

 






From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 


Thomas Gainsborough
Self-portrait (1759)
Born
Baptised(1727-05-14)14 May 1727
Died2 August 1788(1788-08-02) (aged 61)
London, England
Resting placeSt Anne's Church, Kew
EducationHubert-François Gravelot, Francis Hayman
Known for
  • Portrait painting
  • Notable workMr and Mrs Andrews
    The Blue Boy
    MovementRococo
    Spouse

    Margaret Burr

    (m. 1746)
    Children2

    Thomas Gainsborough RA FRSA (/ˈɡnzbərə/; 14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds,[1] he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century.[2] He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes.[3] He is credited (with Richard Wilson) as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.

    Youth and training[edit]

    Lady Lloyd and Her Son, Richard Savage Lloyd, of Hintlesham Hall, Suffolk (1745–46), Yale Center for British Art

    Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods, and his wife Mary, sister of the Reverend Humphry Burroughs.[4] One of Gainsborough's brothers, Humphrey, is said to have invented the method of condensing steam in a separate vessel, which was of great service to James Watt; another brother, John, was known as Scheming Jack because of his passion for designing curiosities.[5]

    The artist spent his childhood at what is now Gainsborough's House, on Gainsborough Street, Sudbury. He later resided there following the death of his father in 1748 and before his move to Ipswich.[6] The building is now a house-museum dedicated to his life and art.

    As a boy he demonstrated impressive drawing and painting skills. At the age of ten he was painting heads and small landscapes, including a miniature self-portrait.[7] Gainsborough left home in 1740 to study art in London, where he trained under engraver Hubert Gravelot[4] but became associated with William Hogarth and his school. He assisted Francis Hayman in decorating the supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens.[4]

    Career[edit]

    Suffolk[edit]

    In 1746, Gainsborough married Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, who had settled a £200 annuity on her. The artist's work, then mostly consisting of landscape paintings, was not selling well. He returned to Sudbury in 1748–1749 and concentrated on painting portraits.[8] While still in Suffolk, Gainsborough painted a portrait of The Rev. John Chafy Playing the Violoncello in a Landscape (c.1750–1752; Tate Gallery, London).[9]

    In 1752, he and his family, now including two daughters, Mary ("Molly", 1750–1826) and Margaret ("Peggy", 1751–1820),[10] moved to Ipswich. Commissions for portraits increased, but his clients included mainly local merchants and squires. He had to borrow against his wife's annuity.[8] Toward the end of his time in Ipswich, he painted a self-portrait,[11] now in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.[12]

    Bath[edit]

    Ann Ford (later Mrs. Philip Thicknesse), 1760, Cincinnati Art Museum
    The Blue Boy (1770). Huntington Library, San Marino, California

    In 1759, Gainsborough and his family moved to Bath, living at number 17 The Circus.[13] There, he studied portraits by van Dyck and was eventually able to attract a fashionable clientele. In 1761, he began to send work to the Society of Arts exhibition in London (now the Royal Society of Arts, of which he was one of the earliest members); and from 1769 he submitted works to the Royal Academy's annual exhibitions. The exhibitions helped him enhance his reputation, and he was invited to become a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1769. His relationship with the academy was not an easy one and he stopped exhibiting his paintings in 1773.

    Despite Gainsborough's increasing popularity and success in painting portraits for fashionable society, he expressed frustration during his Bath period at the demands of such work and that it prevented him from pursuing his preferred artistic interests. In a letter to a friend in the 1760s Gainsborough wrote: "I'm sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my Viol da Gamba and walk off to some sweet Village where I can paint Landskips [landscapes] and enjoy the fag End of Life in quietness and ease".[14] Of the men he had to deal with as patrons and admirers, and their pretensions, he wrote:

    ... damn Gentlemen, there is not such a set of Enemies to a real artist in the world as they are, if not kept at a proper distance. They think ... that they reward your merit by their Company & notice; but I ... know that they have but one part worth looking at, and that is their Purse; their Hearts are seldom near enough the right place to get a sight of it.[15]

    Gainsborough was so keen a viol da gamba player that he had at this stage five of the instruments, three made by Henry Jaye and two by Barak Norman.[16]

    London[edit]

    Frances Browne, Mrs John Douglas (1746–1811), 1783–84, Waddesdon Manor

    In 1774, Gainsborough and his family moved to London to live in Schomberg House, Pall Mall.[4][17] A commemorative blue plaque was put on the house in 1951.[18] In 1777, he again began to exhibit his paintings at the Royal Academy, including portraits of contemporary celebrities, such as the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. Exhibitions of his work continued for the next six years. About this time, Gainsborough began experimenting with printmaking using the then-novel techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching.[19]

    Portrait of Anne, Countess of Chesterfield (1777–78), J. Paul Getty Museum. His later pictures are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes.

    During the 1770s and 1780s Gainsborough developed a type of portrait in which he integrated the sitter into the landscape. An example of this is his portrait of Frances Browne, Mrs John Douglas (1746–1811) which can be seen at Waddesdon Manor. The sitter has withdrawn to a secluded and overgrown corner of a garden to read a letter, her pose recalling the traditional representation of Melancholy. Gainsborough emphasised the relationship between Mrs Douglas and her environment by painting the clouds behind her and the drapery billowing across her lap with similar silvery violet tones and fluid brushstrokes. This portrait was included in his first private exhibition at Schomberg House in 1784.[20]

    In 1776, Gainsborough painted a portrait of Johann Christian Bach,[21] the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach.[22] Bach's former teacher Padre Martini of Bologna, Italy, was assembling a collection of portraits of musicians, and Bach asked Gainsborough to paint his portrait as part of this collection.[21] The portrait now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.[21]

    In 1780, he painted the portraits of King George III and Queen Charlotte and afterwards received other royal commissions. In February 1780, his daughter Molly was married to his musician friend Johann Christian Fischer, to Gainsborough's dismay, as he realized that Fischer was forming an attachment to Molly while carrying on flirtation with Peggy.[10] The marriage between Molly and Fischer lasted only eight months, owing to their discord and Fischer's deceit.[10]

    In 1784, Principal Painter in Ordinary Allan Ramsay died and the King was obliged to give the job to Gainsborough's rival and Academy president, Joshua Reynolds. Gainsborough remained the Royal Family's favorite painter, however.

    In his later years, Gainsborough often painted landscapes. With Richard Wilson, he was one of the originators of the eighteenth-century British landscape school; though simultaneously, in conjunction with Reynolds, he was the dominant British portraitist of the second half of the 18th century.

    William Jackson in his contemporary essays said of him "to his intimate friends he was sincere and honest and that his heart was always alive to every feeling of honour and generosity".[23] Gainsborough did not particularly enjoy reading but letters written to his friends were penned in such an exceptional conversational manner that the style could not be equalled.[24] As a letter writer Henry Bate-Dudley said of him "a selection of his letters would offer the world as much originality and beauty as is ever traced in his paintings".[25]

    In the 1780s, Gainsborough used a device he called a "Showbox" to compose landscapes and display them backlit on glass. The original box is on display in the Victoria & Albert Museum with a reproduction transparency.[26]

    He died of cancer on 2 August 1788 at the age of 61. According to his daughter Peggy, his last words were "van Dyck".[27] He is interred in the churchyard St Anne's Church, Kew, Surrey, (located on Kew Green). It was his express wish to be buried near his friend Joshua Kirby. Later his wife and nephew Gainsborough Dupont were interred with him. Coincidentally Johan Zoffany and Franz Bauer are also buried in the graveyard. In 2011, an appeal was given to pay the costs of restoration of his tomb, and the tomb was restored in 2012.[28][29] A street in Kew, Gainsborough Road, is named after him.[30]

    Technique[edit]

    Girl with Pigs, 1781–82, Private Collection, was said by Sir Joshua Reynolds to be "the best picture he ever painted"[31]

    The art historian Michael Rosenthal described Gainsborough as "one of the most technically proficient and, at the same time, most experimental artists of his time".[19] He 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.[19] 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."

    Gainsborough's enthusiasm for landscapes is shown in the way he merged figures of the portraits with the scenes behind them. His landscapes were often painted at night by candlelight, using a tabletop arrangement of stones, pieces of mirrors, broccoli, and the like as a model.[19] His later work was characterised by a light palette and easy, economical strokes.[32]

    Gainsborough's only known assistant was his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont.[4]

    Reputation[edit]

    Portrait of Mrs Mary Graham (1777) Scottish National Gallery
    The Harvest Wagon (1767)
    Alice De Lancey Izard (between 1747 and 1788) Metropolitan Museum of Art

    His more famous works, The Blue Boy; Mr and Mrs Andrews; Portrait of Mrs. Graham; Mary and Margaret: The Painter's Daughters; William Hallett and His Wife Elizabeth, nee Stephen, known as The Morning Walk; and Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher, display the unique individuality of his subjects. His rival, Joshua Reynolds wrote that the painting Girl with Pigs was "the best picture he (Gainsborough) ever painted or perhaps ever will".[31]

    Gainsborough's works became popular with collectors from the 1850s on, after Lionel de Rothschild began buying his portraits. The rapid rise in the value of pictures by Gainsborough and also by Reynolds in the mid 19th century was partly because the Rothschild family, including Ferdinand de Rothschild began collecting them.[33]

    In 2011, Gainsborough's portrait of Miss Read (Mrs Frances Villebois) was sold by Michael Pearson, 4th Viscount Cowdray, for a record price of £6.54M, at Christie's in London.[34] She was a matrilineal descendant of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York.[35][36]

    Popular culture[edit]

    Gallery[edit]

    See also[edit]

    Further reading[edit]

    References[edit]

    1. ^ Roya Nikkhah (25 November 2012). "Reynolds and Gainsborough - artistic rivals' reconciliation revealed in Royal Academy show". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  • ^ Steven A. Nash; Lynn Federle Orr; California Palace of the Legion of Honor; Marion C. Stewart (1999). Masterworks of European Painting in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Hudson Hills. p. 111. ISBN 9781555951825.
  • ^ Mary Woodall (1939). Gainsborough's Landscape Drawings. Faber & Faber. p. 1.
  • ^ a b c d e "Thomas Gainsborough". National Gallery of Art. Archived from the original on 13 December 2012. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  • ^ Fulcher, George William, Life of Thomas Gainsborough, London 1856
  • ^ The dictionary of art (volume 11 Ferrara-Gainsborough). Turner, Jane, 1956-. New York: Grove. 1996. p. 907. ISBN 978-1884446009. OCLC 34409675.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  • ^ Conrad, Stephen, "Thomas Gainsborough's First Self-portrait", The British Art Journal, Vol. XII, No. 1, Summer 2011, pp. 52–59
  • ^ a b Katharine Baetjer (2009). British Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575-1875. New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 92. ISBN 9781588393487.
  • ^ Tate Gallery website. Retrieved 3 November 2021.
  • ^ a b c Hamilton, James (13 July 2017). Gainsborough: A Portrait. W&N. ISBN 978-1474600521.
  • ^ "The boy is back in town". BBC Suffolk.
  • ^ "Thomas Gainsborough". National Portrait Gallery.
  • ^ Greenwood, Charles (1977). Famous houses of the West Country. Bath: Kingsmead Press. pp. 84–86. ISBN 978-0-901571-87-8.
  • ^ Letter to William Jackson, from Bath, dated 4 June (but without the year), in M. Woodall (ed.), The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough (London, 1961), p. 115.
  • ^ Letter to William Jackson, from Bath, dated 2 September 1767, in M. Woodall (ed.), The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough (London, 1961), p. 101.
  • ^ Letter to William Jackson, from Bath, dated 4 June (but without the year), in M. Woodall (ed.), The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough (London, 1961), p. 115: "My comfort is, I have 5 Viols da Gamba, 3 Jayes and two Barak Normans."
  • ^ Plaque #2 on Open Plaques
  • ^ "Thomas Gainsborough Blue Plaque". openplaques.org. Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
  • ^ a b c d Rosenthal, Michael. "Gainsborough, Thomas". Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web.
  • ^ "Search Results". collection.waddesdon.org.uk. Archived from the original on 12 April 2017. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
  • ^ a b c "Johann Christian Bach". National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  • ^ Bagnoli, Giorgio (1993). The La Scala Encyclopedia of the Opera. Simon and Schuster. p. 38. ISBN 9780671870423.
  • ^ Jackson, William (1798). The Four Ages including essays on various subjects. Cadell & Davies. p. 161. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016.
  • ^ Jackson, William (1798). The Four Ages including essays on various subjects. Cadell & Davies. p. 183. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016.
  • ^ Woodall, Mary, Introduction to The Letters of Thomas Gainborough, Cupid Press, London, 1963
  • ^ "Gainsborough's Showbox". www.vam.ac.uk. 12 July 2011. Archived from the original on 2 August 2011.
  • ^ "Episode 5, Gainsborough, Book of the Week - BBC Radio 4". BBC. Archived from the original on 14 August 2017. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  • ^ "Restoration of Thomas Gainsborough's tomb". Richmond Guardian. London. 7 March 2011. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 1 December 2011.
  • ^ www.minervaconservation.com http://www.minervaconservation.com/monuments/gainsborough. Retrieved 16 December 2023. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • ^ Dunbar, Janet. A Prospect of Richmond (1977 ed.). George Harrap. pp. 199–209.
  • ^ a b Willes, F.W. Letters of Joshua Reynolds, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1929
  • ^ Birmingham Museum of Art (2010). Birmingham Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection. London: Giles. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-904832-77-5. Archived from the original on 10 September 2011. Retrieved 24 June 2011.
  • ^ Hall, M. Waddesdon Manor: The Heritage of a Rothschild House, Scala, London, 2009, p. 77
  • ^ "Christie's".
  • ^ "Richard III – Family tree – Ann of York – Michael Ibsen – University of Leicester". Archived from the original on 20 January 2015.
  • ^ Turi E. King; et al. (2014). "Figure 1: Genealogical links between Richard III and modern-day relatives who participated in this study". Nature Communications. 5: 5631. doi:10.1038/ncomms6631. PMC 4268703. PMID 25463651.
  • ^ "Tower Theatre Company : Gainsborough's Girls". Archived from the original on 24 April 2019. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  • ^ "A Right Royal Face-Off by Simon Edge | Eye Books".
  • ^ "The English paintings that inspired Stanley Kubrick | art | Agenda | Phaidon". www.phaidon.com. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
  • ^ "Gainsborough painting restored and rehung after 'drill-bit attack'". TheGuardian.com. 28 March 2017.
  • External links[edit]


    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Gainsborough&oldid=1226703878"

    Categories: 
    Thomas Gainsborough
    1727 births
    1788 deaths
    People from Sudbury, Suffolk
    Burials at St. Anne's Church, Kew
    18th-century English painters
    18th-century English male artists
    English male painters
    Royal Academicians
    English portrait painters
    English landscape artists
    Rococo painters
    Deaths from cancer in England
    People educated at Sudbury Grammar School
    Waddesdon Manor
    Hidden categories: 
    Articles containing German-language text
    CS1 maint: others
    CS1 errors: missing title
    CS1 errors: bare URL
    Articles with short description
    Short description is different from Wikidata
    Use British English from February 2012
    Use dmy dates from October 2018
    Articles with hCards
    Pages using Template:Post-nominals with customized linking
    Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the ODNB
    Pages using cite ODNB with id parameter
    Articles incorporating Cite DNB template
    Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference
    Commons link from Wikidata
    Articles with FAST identifiers
    Articles with ISNI identifiers
    Articles with VIAF identifiers
    Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
    Articles with BIBSYS identifiers
    Articles with BNE identifiers
    Articles with BNF identifiers
    Articles with BNFdata identifiers
    Articles with CANTICN identifiers
    Articles with GND identifiers
    Articles with J9U identifiers
    Articles with KBR identifiers
    Articles with LCCN identifiers
    Articles with Libris identifiers
    Articles with LNB identifiers
    Articles with NDL identifiers
    Articles with NKC identifiers
    Articles with NLA identifiers
    Articles with NLG identifiers
    Articles with NTA identifiers
    Articles with PLWABN identifiers
    Articles with PortugalA identifiers
    Articles with VcBA identifiers
    Articles with CINII identifiers
    Articles with AAG identifiers
    Articles with AGSA identifiers
    Articles with KULTURNAV identifiers
    Articles with MusicBrainz identifiers
    Articles with National Gallery of Canada identifiers
    Articles with NGV identifiers
    Articles with Prado identifiers
    Articles with RKDartists identifiers
    Articles with Städel identifiers
    Articles with ULAN identifiers
    Articles with DTBIO identifiers
    Articles with Trove identifiers
    Articles with SNAC-ID identifiers
    Articles with SUDOC identifiers
    Articles with TePapa identifiers
     



    This page was last edited on 1 June 2024, at 09:18 (UTC).

    Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.



    Privacy policy

    About Wikipedia

    Disclaimers

    Contact Wikipedia

    Code of Conduct

    Developers

    Statistics

    Cookie statement

    Mobile view



    Wikimedia Foundation
    Powered by MediaWiki