Gainsborough

By Max Rothschild

As one can guess from the title, the following work is a biography of Thomas Gainsborough, an English portrait and landscape painter, draftsman, 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. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterized by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes. He is credited (with Richard Wilson) as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547414018

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Max Rothschild

Gainsborough

EAN 8596547414018

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

I PAINTING IN ENGLAND BEFORE GAINSBOROUGH

II GAINSBOROUGH'S EARLY LIFE—IPSWICH AND BATH

III GAINSBOROUGH'S LIFE IN LONDON—LAST YEARS AND DEATH

IV GAINSBOROUGH'S WORKS

I

PAINTING IN ENGLAND BEFORE GAINSBOROUGH

Table of Contents

The British school of painting was, compared with those of the other nations of Western Europe, the latest to develop. In Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and even Scandinavia painting and sculpture flourished as early as the Gothic Age, and in most of these countries the Renaissance produced a host of craftsmen whose works still endure among the most superb creations of artistic genius. It is now inexact to say that there was no primitive period in British Art; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, so resplendent on the Continent with pictures and statues reflecting the character, the aspirations, the temperament of the respective peoples that produced them, produced works of art also in these islands. There are ample records of pictures having been painted in England, both religious subjects and portraits, at a very early age, as far back even as the reign of Henry III.; of such remote productions little has been preserved, but there are still extant a few specimens, from the thirteenth century onwards, as well as portraits of Henry VI., Henry VII., and effigies of princes and earls, which cause us to mourn the loss of a large number of paintings; they are at times grotesque and so thoroughly bad as to be a quite negligible quantity as works of art, though no doubt historically interesting.

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PLATE II.—RALPH SCHOMBERG, M.D.

This canvas can be seen in the National Gallery, and represents a member of the family of Field-Marshal Duke Schomberg, who was killed in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne. It is painted in the fashion of the time, a full figure in the open air, and is a very fine example of Gainsborough's work.

PLATE II.—RALPH SCHOMBERG, M.D.

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It may be stated for our purposes that until the reign of Henry VIII. the art of painting was non-existent in England. This luxurious and liberal monarch it was who first gave any real and discerning encouragement to art, and the year 1526 must ever be memorable as the one in which was laid the foundation-stone of British Art. In that year the Earl of Arundel returned from a journey on the Continent; he was accompanied by a young man of powerful build, "with a swarthy sensual face, a