Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough (baptised 14 May 1727 – 2 August 1788) worked as an English painter, draughtsman, and printmaker, focusing on portraits and landscapes. Alongside his rival Joshua Reynolds, he ranked among the most significant British artists of the 1700s. He worked at speed, and his mature pieces show a light colour palette and fluid brushwork. Though he painted many portraits, he found more pleasure in landscapes. Together with Richard Wilson, he is seen as the founder of the 18th-century British landscape school. He was also a founding member of the Royal Academy.

Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and woollen-goods maker, and his wife Mary, whose brother was the Reverend Humphry Burroughs. One of his brothers, Humphrey, supposedly came up with the method of condensing steam in a separate vessel, which helped James Watt; another brother, John, was called Scheming Jack because he loved designing curiosities. The artist spent his childhood at what is now Gainsborough's House on Gainsborough Street in Sudbury. He lived there again after his father died in 1748, before moving to Ipswich. That building is now a house-museum about his life and art. As a boy, he showed strong drawing and painting skills. By age ten, he was painting heads and small landscapes, including a miniature self-portrait. In 1740, he left home to study art in London, training under engraver Hubert Gravelot and becoming linked with William Hogarth and his circle. He helped Francis Hayman decorate the supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens.

In 1746, Gainsborough married Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of the 3rd Duke of Beaufort, who had given her a £200 yearly allowance. At that time, his work—mostly landscapes—was not selling well. He returned to Sudbury around 1748–1749 and turned his focus to portrait painting. While still in Suffolk, he painted *The Rev. John Chafy Playing the Violoncello in a Landscape* (about 1750–1752, now at the Tate Gallery, London). In 1752, he and his family, which now included two daughters, Mary (called Molly, 1750–1826) and Margaret (called Peggy, 1751–1820), moved to Ipswich. Portrait commissions increased, but his clients were mainly local merchants and landowners. He had to borrow against his wife's annuity. Near the end of his time in Ipswich, he painted a self-portrait that now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

In 1759, Gainsborough and his family moved to Bath, living at number 17 The Circus. There, he studied van Dyck's portraits and eventually attracted fashionable clients. Starting with the 1761 Exhibition, he sent work to the annual show of the Society of Artists of Great Britain (he was an early member) at Spring Gardens in London. From 1769, he submitted pieces to the Royal Academy's annual exhibitions. These shows boosted his reputation, and in 1769 he was invited to become a founding member of the Royal Academy. His relationship with the Academy was strained, and he stopped exhibiting there in 1773. Despite his growing popularity and success painting portraits for high society, Gainsborough grew frustrated during his Bath years with the demands of that work, which he felt kept him from his preferred art. In a 1760s letter to a friend, he wrote: "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 [landscapes] and enjoy the fag End of Life in quietness and ease." Of the gentlemen who were his patrons, he said: "... damn Gentlemen, there is not such a set of Enemies to a real artist in the world as they are, if not kept at a proper distance. They think ... that they reward your merit by their Company & notice; but I ... know that they have but one part worth looking at, and that is their Purse; their Hearts are seldom near enough the right place to get a sight of it." Gainsborough was such an enthusiastic viol da gamba player that he owned five of the instruments at this time—three made by Henry Jaye and two by Barak Norman.

In 1774, Gainsborough and his family moved to London, settling at Schomberg House on Pall Mall. A commemorative blue plaque was placed there in 1951. In 1777, he began exhibiting again at the Royal Academy, showing portraits of contemporary celebrities like the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. He continued exhibiting for the next six years. Around this time, he started experimenting with printmaking, using the then-new techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. During the 1770s and 1780s, he developed a type of portrait that blended the sitter into the landscape. An example is his portrait of Frances Browne, Mrs John Douglas (1746–1811), now at Waddesdon Manor. The sitter sits in a secluded, overgrown garden corner reading a letter, her pose recalling the traditional depiction of Melancholy. Gainsborough highlighted the connection between Mrs Douglas and her surroundings by painting the clouds behind her and the drapery across her lap with similar silvery violet tones and fluid brushstrokes. This portrait appeared in his first private exhibition at Schomberg House in 1784. In 1776, he painted a portrait of Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach's former teacher, Padre Martini of Bologna, Italy, was gathering a collection of musician portraits, and Bach asked Gainsborough to paint his for that collection.