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Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough RA FRSA (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century.
The feathery brushwork of his mature work and rich sense of colour contribute to the enduring popularity of his portraits. Unlike Reynolds, he avoids references to Italian Renaissance art or the Antique, and shows his sitters in fashionable contemporary dress. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes.
He was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, the son of a wool manufacturer. The artist spent his childhood at what is now Gainsborough’s House, on Gainsborough Street, Sudbury. He trained in London, and set up in practice in Ipswich about 1752. In 1759 he moved to Bath, a fashionable spa town, attracting many clients for his portraits. He later resided there, following the death of his father in 1748 and before his move to Ipswich.
When he was still a boy he impressed his father with his drawing and painting skills, and he almost certainly had painted heads and small landscapes by the time he was ten years old, including a miniature self-portrait. Gainsborough was allowed to leave home in 1740 to study art in London, where he trained under engraver Hubert Gravelot but became associated with William Hogarth and his school. He assisted Francis Hayman in the decoration of the supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, and contributed one image to the decoration of what is now the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children.
In 1746, Gainsborough married Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, who had settled a £200 annuity on her. In 1752, he and his family, now including two daughters, Mary (“Molly”, 1750–1826) and Margaret (“Peggy”, 1751–1820), 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.
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”. 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. 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. His later work was characterised by a light palette and easy, economical strokes.
His more famous works, The Blue Boy; Mr. and Mrs. Andrews; The Painters Daughters Chasing a Butterfly; William Hallett and His Wife Elizabeth, known as The Morning Walk; and , display the unique individuality of his subjects. Joshua Reynolds considered Girl with Pigs “the best picture he (Gainsborough) ever painted or perhaps ever will”.
Thomas Gainsborough’s works became popular with collectors from the 1850s on.
He died of cancer on 2 August 1788 at the age of 61. According to his daughter Peggy, his last words were “Van Dyck”. He is interred in the churchyard St. Anne’s Church, Kew, Surrey.
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Portrait of John Palmer 1775
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of John Richards
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Portrait of John Thornton, Esq.
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $319.00Portrait of Joshua Kirby
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $339.00Portrait of Richard Lowndes
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Portrait of Thomas Chubb
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of Thomas Hanmer
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Richard Paul Jodrell 1774
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Robert Adair 1785
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Robert Butcher of Walthamstow 1765
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Sir Francis Gregg 1770
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Sir William Blackstone 1774
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Self-portrait of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. 1787
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Sir George Chad, Baronet of Thursford 1775
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Sir John Edward Swinburne 1785
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $289.00The Rev. Humphry Gainsborough
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00The Rev. Samuel Uvedale
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00The Reverend Samuel Kilderbee 1758
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Thomas Haviland
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Thomas Linley the elder 1770
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Thomas Pennant 1776
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $319.00An Officer of the 16th Light Dragoons 1765
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Charles Rousseau Burney 1780
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Edward Vernon 1753
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00John Purling
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of C.W. Bampfylde as Colonel of the Somerset Militia
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Portrait of Hugh Smithson (Percy), Ist Duke of Northumberland
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of Robert Sutton, of Scotton, Nottinghamshire
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Portrait of Thomas Hibbert 1785
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Sir Benjamin Thompson, later Count Rumford 1783
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Lieutenant Colonel Paul Pechell
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00A Man Called Mr. Wood, the Dancing Master 1757
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Jean-Joseph Merlin 1781
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Lambe Barry
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of Francis Bennett 1766
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of Sir Walter Barttelot, High Sheriff of Sussex
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Sir Francis Basset
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Sir John Durbin
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Sir Robert Clayton 1769
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Surgeon General David Middleton 1775
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Self portrait
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of Thomas Walker of Woodstock, Oxford 1780
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Portrait of a Gentleman
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Thomas Linley the younger 1772
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of Colonel The Hon. Charles Hamilton
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of George Coyte 1780
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Portrait of Sir Richard Brinsley Sheridan 1785
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Samuel Linley 1778
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00William Pitt
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00The Pitminster Boy
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Captain Thomas Mathews 1772
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00John Christopher Burton Dawnay, Fifth Viscount Downe 1781
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Portrait of H.R.H. Prince George, Prince of Wales
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of Louis-René Ferdinand Quentin de Richebourg, Chevalier de Champcenetz
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Viscount Hampden 1780
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Portrait of a Young Man with Powdered Hair 1750
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of a Gentleman 1
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Equestrian portrait of Albert, duc d’Arenberg, prince of Barbonçon
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $289.00Bumper, a Bull Terrier 1745
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00Tristram and Fox
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00Hounds Hunting a Fox
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $309.00Spitz Dog 1765
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $279.00A Pug
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $279.00Cottage Children (The Wood Gatherers) 1787
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $339.00Young Hobbinol and Ganderetta 1788
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $339.00A Lady Walking in a Garden with a Child
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Study of a Lady 1785
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $299.00Wooded Landscape with Herdsmen Driving Cattle over a Bridge, Rustic Lovers and Ruined Castle 1797
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00Wooded Landscape with Peasant Reading Tombstone, Rustic Lovers and Ruined Church 1797
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $289.00Wooded Landscape with Two Country Carts and Figures 1797
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $279.00An Open Landscape at dusk
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $279.00Cattle Watering by a Stream
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $259.00Landscape and Cattle
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00Travellers on Horseback Approaching a Village with a Spire
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $279.00Landscape with cottage and church
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00An Imaginary Wooded Village with Drovers and Cattle
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00Wooded Landscape with Mounted Peasants 1772
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00A country track with houses
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00Hilly Landscape with Figures Approaching a Bridge 1763
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $279.00Diana and Actaeon
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $269.00Descent from the Cross
By Thomas GainsboroughSizes starting at $259.00