Gainsborough, Thomas 1727-88
English landscape and portrait painter

Born in Sudbury, Suffolk, he copied Dutch landscapes in his youth and at the age of 14 was sent to London where he learned the art of Rococo decoration under Hubert Gravelot and Francis Hayman. The Charterhouse (1748) marks the end of his apprenticeship. He settled as a portrait painter at Ipswich in 1745. Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748) and several 'chimney-piece' paintings belong to this, his Suffolk period. In 1760 he moved to Bath, where he established himself with his portrait of Earl Nugent (1760). His portraits combine the elegance of Van Dyck with his own characteristic informality, although in his later work he increasingly tends towards fashionable artificialities. Among his early masterpieces are Lord and Lady Howe, Mrs Portman (Tate, London) and Blue Boy (Huntington Collection, Pasadena), and the great landscapes The Harvest Wagon (1767, Barber Institute, Birmingham) and The Watering Place (1777, Tate) in which Rubens's influence is discernible. He became a foundation member of the Royal Academy in 1768, and exhibited there annually, until somewhat discontented with the place assigned to The King's Daughters in 1784, he retired. He moved to London in 1774. To this last period belong the character study Mr Truman, the luxuriant Mrs Graham (1777, Edinburgh), George III and Queen Charlotte (1781, Windsor Castle), and Mrs Siddons (1785). Landscapes include Cottage Door (1780, Pasadena), The Morning Walk (1780), which is closer to his 'fancy pieces' based on Bartolom� Murillo's paintings than to nature, and Cattle Crossing a Bridge (1781), the most rococo of all his work.

Bibliography: Isabelle Worman, Thomas Gainsborough: A Biography (1987)