Thomas Gainsborough
Portraits and landscapes in the English style.
Gainsborough painted noblemen in parkland and himself preferred landscapes. His The Blue Boy is one of England's best-known paintings.
Thomas Gainsborough was born in 1727 in Sudbury in Suffolk. His father was a cloth merchant. Even as a boy he drew the landscapes around his home town. At the age of thirteen he was sent to London, where he worked with the French engraver Hubert Gravelot and learned the light style of the Rococo. In 1746 he married Margaret Burr, who had an annual allowance that gave the family some security. They had two daughters, whom he painted many times.
The couple moved back to Suffolk. There he painted Mr and Mrs Andrews (c. 1750), a young couple in front of their fields. The painting is in the National Gallery in London and is one of the best-known British works of the 18th century. In 1759 he moved to the spa town of Bath, where wealthy visitors wanted to have their portraits painted. There his style matured. In 1774 he moved to London and became one of the court's favourite painters. The Blue Boy (c. 1770), a young man in a blue silk suit, was sold to the United States in 1921 and is in the Huntington Library in California.
Gainsborough painted quickly and with a light touch. The brushstrokes are feathery and almost sketch-like, and the sitters blend into the trees and clouds of the background. He is said to have used brushes with very long handles in order to see the whole. Unlike Reynolds, he cared little for ancient models. He wanted to capture likeness and mood. He himself preferred landscapes, and in letters he complained about the portraits he painted for the money.
Gainsborough was one of the founders of the Royal Academy in 1768, but he often quarrelled with the Academy about how his works should be hung and stopped exhibiting there in 1784. He loved music and kept company with musicians. His rivalry with Reynolds was well known, but they were reconciled when Gainsborough lay dying. He died of cancer in 1788. Reynolds later paid tribute to him in one of his Discourses.
Gainsborough's landscapes became an important inspiration for John Constable and for English landscape painting in the 19th century. His free brushwork has also been seen as anticipating later painters who let their brushstrokes show.