Gainsborough, Thomas (1727–1788)

GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS (1727–1788)

GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS (1727–1788), English painter. Rivaling Sir Joshua Reynolds in the field of portraiture, Thomas Gainsborough's career highlights the opportunities available to a painter in eighteenth-century England. After establishing his practice in provincial cities, Gainsborough maintained close connections to the London scene through personal contacts and by regularly displaying his work at exhibition venues. His continued allegiance to the unprofitable genre of landscape painting served as a model for future generations of landscapists, such as John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner.

Born in Sudbury, Suffolk, Gainsborough received his early training from Francis Wynantz, probably a Dutch artist. East Anglia traditionally had close ties to the Low Countries, and Gainsborough's early landscape style reflects this influence.

Gainsborough's father was a failed clothier, who after declaring bankruptcy in 1733 became the local postmaster. Gainsborough, however, was an artistic prodigy, and around 1740 he went to London, where he studied with the French artist Hubert François Gravelot and then with Francis Hayman. Absorbing the French rococo style of Gravelot, Gainsborough also adopted his master's practice of drawing from small-scale dolls. Gravelot returned to Paris in 1745, and it is this year to which Gainsborough's independent practice is usually dated. His independence was further bolstered by his marriage in 1746 to Margaret Burr, who had an annual income of £200, which she received from the duke of Beaufort, assumed to be her natural father.

At the death of his father in 1748 and in pursuit of patronage, Gainsborough established a practice in his native Sudbury. Before leaving London, he completed the roundel The Charterhouse (1748; Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, London) for the Foundling Hospital. In addition, he began his early landscape masterpiece Cornard Wood or Gainsborough's Forest (c. 1746–1747; National Gallery, London). When Alderman Boydell purchased this work in 1788 for 75 guineas, Gainsborough wrote with satisfaction that "it is in some respects a little in the schoolboy stile—but I do not reflect on this without a secret gratification; for as an early instance how strong my inclination stood for Landskip."

Of necessity, however, Gainsborough had to concentrate his practice on portraiture, and in 1752 he moved to Ipswich in order to find a wider clientele. By 1759 he was increasingly traveling farther afield in search of new commissions, and by the end of that year had moved to the spa city of Bath, where he remained until 1773.

Soon after his arrival in Bath, Gainsborough raised his prices to 20 guineas for a head portrait, 40 guineas for a half-length portrait, and 80 guineas for a full-length portrait, suggesting that there was sufficient patronage in the fashionable city for the newcomer as well as the already established William Hoare. The first large work Gainsborough painted in Bath was the full-length portrait of Ann Ford (1760; Cincinnati Art Museum), the future wife of his friend Philip Thicknesse.

Gainsborough's move to Bath coincided with the establishment of annual exhibitions at the Society of Artists in London, and from 1761 onward he sent examples of his full-length portraits, such as Robert Craggs, Earl Nugent (1760; private collection), as well as some of his landscapes, such as The Harvest Wagon (1767; Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham). The strength of his reputation in the London art world was confirmed by his invitation in December 1768 to become a founder-member of the Royal Academy.

Gainsborough articulated his dual love of music and landscape in a letter dated 1769 to his friend William Jackson, the composer and organist of Exeter Cathedral, "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 and enjoy the fag End of Life in quietness and ease." Nevertheless, he continued to paint portraits, and after his 1774 move to London, Gainsborough gained important commissions from the royal family, whose patronage Reynolds was never to attain. Even so, on the death of Allan Ramsay in 1784, Reynolds was named principal painter on the basis of his presidency of the Royal Academy.

Although Gainsborough was appointed to its council the year of his move to London, his relationship with the Royal Academy was uneasy. In 1773 he had objected to the way his paintings were hung at the academy's annual exhibition, and he did not again contribute to the exhibition until 1777. In 1784 he once more complained about the hanging of his portraits; they were returned to him, and he never exhibited at the Royal Academy again. Gainsborough also advised his patrons on the best placement of his portraits, showing his attention to the effect of light on his work. Gainsborough's concern with light and its effects can be seen in his painting technique: Often he would paint by candlelight, as well as with long brushes to achieve distance from the canvas.

On Gainsborough's death in 1788, Reynolds devoted his annual lecture to the students and members of the Royal Academy to his rival, acknowledging that "all those odd scratches and marks . . . by a kind of magick, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places."

See also Academies of Art ; Britain ; Art in ; Reynolds, Joshua ; Rococo .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Reynolds, Sir Joshua. Discourses on Art. Edited by Robert R. Wark. New Haven and London, 1975.

Woodall, Mary, ed. The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough. London and Greenwich, Conn., 1963.

Secondary Sources

Hayes, John T. The Landscape Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough: A Critical Text and Catalogue Raisonné. London and Ithaca, N.Y., 1982.

Lindsay, Jack. Thomas Gainsborough: His Life and Art. London, 1981.

Rosenthal, Michael. The Art of Thomas Gainsborough: "A Little Business for the Eye." New Haven and London, 1999.

Elizabeth A. Pergam