Gainsborough, Thomas

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Gainsborough, Thomas (1727–88). Painter. Gainsborough was born in Sudbury (Suffolk), the youngest of nine children. He showed early promise as a landscape artist and at 13 went to London to study etching and painting. While continuing throughout his life to paint landscapes, which were his first love, he set up as a portrait painter in 1752, first in Ipswich, then, in 1760, in Bath. In 1768 Gainsborough was elected a founder member of the Royal Academy, yet his relations with both the academy and his great rival, its first president, Reynolds, were always strained. In 1774 the artist settled in London, almost immediately becoming the preferred painter of the royal family. Royal patronage and that of artists, aristocrats, and politicians ensured his lasting prosperity. One of his best-known works is the portrait of Jonathan Buttall, known as The Blue Boy. His full-length painting of the Hon. Mrs Graham is in the Scottish National Gallery, that of Countess Howe at Kenwood.

June Cochrane

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