Thomas Gainsborough
1727-1788
Gainsborough, Thomas was English Rococo / Romantic painter. He was one of the most famous portrait and landscape painters, and fancy pictures, of 18th century Britain.
Gainsborough was born in 1727 in Sudbury, Suffolk, England. His father was a schoolteacher involved with the wool trade. At the age of fourteen Gainsborough impressed his father with his pencilling skills so that he let him go to London to study art in 1740. In London he first trained under engraver Hubert Gravelot but eventually became associated with William Hogarth and his school. One of his mentors was Francis Hayman.
In the 1740s, Gainsborough married Margaret Burr. The artist’s work, then mainly composed of landscape paintings, was not selling very well. He returned to Sudbury in 1748-1749 and concentrated on the painting of portraits.
Gainsborough’s best known painting of his Suffolk period was “Mr and Mrs Andrews”. He and his family moved to Ipswich and commissions for personal portraits increased. In 1759, Gainsborough with family moved to Bath. There, he studied portraits by van Dyck and was eventually able to attract a better-paying high society clientele. In 1761, he began to send work to the Society of Arts exhibition in London and to the Royal Academy’s annual exhibitions. He attracted attention and acquired a national reputation. He was invited to become one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1769.
In 1774, Gainsborough with family moved to London. After exhibiting again his paintings and portraits of contemporary celebrities at the Royal Academy and painting the portraits of King George III and his queen he received many royal commissions. This gave him some influence with the Academy and allowed him to dictate the manner in which he wished his work to be exhibited. In 1784, royal painter Allan Ramsay died and the King was obliged to give the job to Gainsborough’s rival, Joshua Reynolds. But Gainsborough remained the Royal Family’s favorite painter.
In his later years, Gainsborough often painted relatively simple, ordinary landscapes. With Richard Wilson, he was one of the originators of the eighteenth-century British landscape school; though simultaneously, in conjunction with Joshua Reynolds, he was the dominant British portraitist of the second half of the 18th century.
Gainsborough painted more from his observations of nature than from any application of formal academic rules. His most famous works, such as 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.
Gainsborough’s only known assistant was his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont. He died of cancer on 2 August 1788 in his 62nd year.
