|
|
|
| | | Prev Artist Next Artist
|
|
Thomas Gainsborough
1727-1788
British
Thomas Gainsborough Locations
English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name. He went on to consider Gainsborough portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth. His portraits, landscapes and subject pictures are only now coming to be studied in all their complexity; having previously been viewed as being isolated from the social, philosophical and ideological currents of their time, they have yet to be fully related to them. It is clear, however, that his landscapes and rural pieces, and some of his portraits, were as significant as Reynolds acknowledged them to be in 1788.
|
|
|
|
|
| Click Image to Enlarge |
The Harvest Wagon
1767
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham
Painting ID:: 1304
|
|
|
The_Harvest_Wagon
1767
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham
|
|
|
|
| Click Image to Enlarge |
Portrait of a Lady in Blue 5
1770's
The Hermitage, StPetersburg
Painting ID:: 1305
|
|
|
Portrait_of_a_Lady_in_Blue_5
1770's
The Hermitage, StPetersburg
|
|
|
|
| Click Image to Enlarge |
The Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly
1755-56
National Gallery, London
Painting ID:: 1306
|
|
|
The_Painter's_Daughters_Chasing_a_Butterfly
1755-56
National Gallery, London
|
|
|
|
| Click Image to Enlarge |
Lady Alston 4
1760-65
Musee du Louvre, Paris
Painting ID:: 1307
|
|
|
Lady_Alston_4
1760-65
Musee du Louvre, Paris
|
|
|
|
| Click Image to Enlarge |
The Honorable Mrs Graham
1775-77
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
Painting ID:: 1308
|
|
|
The_Honorable_Mrs_Graham
1775-77
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
|
|
|
| Prev Artist Next Artist
|
|
Thomas_Gainsborough
1727-1788
British
Thomas Gainsborough Locations
English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name. He went on to consider Gainsborough portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth. His portraits, landscapes and subject pictures are only now coming to be studied in all their complexity; having previously been viewed as being isolated from the social, philosophical and ideological currents of their time, they have yet to be fully related to them. It is clear, however, that his landscapes and rural pieces, and some of his portraits, were as significant as Reynolds acknowledged them to be in 1788.
|
|
|
ARTWORKS INDEX
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
ARTISTS INDEX A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
|
|
Wholesale China Oil Painting Wholesale Oil Painting China Xiamen Portrait Reproduction on canvas Chinese Oil Painting Wholesale
|
|
|
|
|
