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Thomas Gainsborough

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists

          This article is about the artist Thomas Gainsborough.
          Gainsborough is also the name of a small market town in
          Lincolnshire in England.

   Thomas Gainsborough
   Self-portrait, painted 1759
   Birth name   Thomas Gainsborough
           Born 14 May 1727 (baptised)
                Sudbury, Suffolk, England
           Died 2 August 1788
    Nationality British
          Field Painter
   Famous works Mr and Mrs Andrews
                The Blue Boy

   Thomas Gainsborough ( 14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was one
   of the most famous portrait and landscape painters 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 he 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 those years he contributed to the decoration of what is now the
   Thomas Coram Foundation for Children and the supper boxes at Vauxhall
   Gardens.

   In the 1740s, Gainsborough married Margaret Burr, an illegitimate
   daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, who settled a £200 annuity on the
   couple. 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 Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748-49), in the National Gallery in
   London, is the best known painting of his Suffolk period.
   Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews (1748-49), in the National Gallery in
   London, is the best known painting of his Suffolk period.

   In 1752, he and his family, now including two daughters, moved to
   Ipswich. Commissions for personal portraits increased, but his
   clientele included mainly local merchants and squires. He had to borrow
   against his wife's annuity.

   In 1759, Gainsborough and his 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 (now the Royal Society of
   Arts, of which he was one of the earliest members); and from 1769 on,
   he submitted works to the Royal Academy's annual exhibitions. He
   selected portraits of well-known or notorious clients in order to
   attract attention. These exhibitions helped him acquire a national
   reputation, and he was invited to become one of the founding members of
   the Royal Academy in 1769. His relationship with the academy, however,
   was not an easy one and he stopped exhibiting his paintings there in
   1773.
   The Blue Boy, painted 1770
   The Blue Boy, painted 1770

   In 1774, Gainsborough and his family moved to London to live in
   Schomberg House, Pall Mall. In 1777, he again began to exhibit his
   paintings at the Royal Academy, including portraits of contemporary
   celebrities, such as the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. Exhibitions of
   his work continued for the next six years.

   In 1780, he painted the portraits of King George III and his queen and
   afterwards 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. However, in 1783, he removed
   his paintings from the forthcoming exhibition and transferred them to
   Schomberg House.

   In 1784, royal painter Allan Ramsay died and the King was obliged to
   give the job to Gainsborough's rival and Academy president, Joshua
   Reynolds. However Gainsborough remained the Royal Family's favourite
   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 conjucntion with Joshua Reynolds, he was the
   dominant British portraitist of the second half of the 18th century.
   Mr and Mrs William Hallett (1785) exemplifies Gainsborough's mature
   style.
   Mr and Mrs William Hallett (1785) exemplifies Gainsborough's mature
   style.
   Mrs Thomas Hibbert, Neue Pinakothek
   Mrs Thomas Hibbert, Neue Pinakothek

   Gainsborough painted more from his observations of nature (and human
   nature) than from any application of formal academic rules. The poetic
   sensibility of his paintings caused Constable to say, "On looking at
   them, we find tears in our eyes and know not what brings them." He
   himself said, "I'm sick of portraits, and wish very much to take my
   viol-da-gam and walk off to some sweet village, where I can paint
   landskips (sic) and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease."

   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.

Trivia

     * In Ghostbusters II ( 1989), Dr. Janosz Poha exclaims to Peter
       Venkman, with heavy accent approximated, "Theees eeesn't
       Gainsborough's Blue Boy, ees Preeence Veego, Ruler of Carpathia and
       Moldavia!"
     * His sitters tend to look rather similar, and supposedly when one
       client complained that the portrait did not resemble his wife at
       all, he told him not to worry, in a few years time no-one would
       know the difference.
     * If he was painting a portrait of a woman (alone, not as a member of
       a couple) that he did not personally find attractive, he would
       paint a dog in the portrait.

In Fiction

     * Kitty (Paramount 1945) is a notable fictionl film about
       Gainsborough see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037849
     * Gainsborough has an important posthumous role in the alternate
       history novel The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove. In the alternate
       history depicted in the book, the 18th Century American colonists
       reached a compromise with the British government which averted the
       American War of Independence and let North America remain part of
       the British Empire in gthe 20th Century. In this world,
       Gainsborough painted a picture of King George III and George
       Washington signing on the historic compromise. In later generations
       this picutre ("The Two Georges of the title) becomes a famous
       iconic symbol of the harmonious good relations between Btitiain and
       the North American Union, with copies of it to seen everywhere and
       its facsimile appearing on currency notes. The whole plot of the
       novel turns on its theft by terrorists and the efforts to recover
       it.

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