averilburystedmunds: Thomas Gainsborough 1727-1788

Self-portrait, Thomas Gainsborough
"The lyric genius."

A garlanded Thomas Gainsborough
overlooking Sudbury

Margaret Gainsborough holding a theorbo.
1728-1797.

Thomas Gainsborough, son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and shroud-maker, and his wife, Mary, whose brother was a Reverend Humphry Burroughs, was born in the family home in Sudbury, Suffolk in what is now Gainsborough House. It was a creative family. One brother, Humphrey, had some ability in mechanics, and his method of condensing steam in a separate vessel, is said to have been used by James Watt in his research. Another brother, John, had a passion for inventing curiosities. In fact, brother Humphrey became a Nonconformist minister famous for his scientific inventions. Thomas himself showed early artistic promise. By the time he was ten, he was painting very competent heads and small landscapes, and his father, impressed with the talent on display, allowed Thomas in 1740, at the age of 13, to go to London as apprentice to Hubert Gravelot, an engraver. Here he moved to study with the William Hogarth school and assisted Francis Heyman in decorating supper boxes at the Vauxhall Gardens, also contributing a portrait to Captain Coram’s Foundation for Foundlings, part of Hogarth’s innovative move to use artists commercially in fund -raising for Coram’s life-saving scheme.

Molly and Peggy

Still a young man, he married Margaret Burr, in 1746, the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort who had settled a £200 annuity on her, a useful backstop in case of future need for Thomas. Knowing her husband to be a spendthrift like his father, Margaret insisted on Thomas handing over his considerable earnings, out of which she grudgingly allowed him pocket money. Eventually they had two daughters, Molly and Peggy, whom he often painted as they grew up. In 1759 the family moved to Ipswich in search of better commissions for Gainsborough, and were eventually drawn to live in fashionable Bath as his fame in portraiture increased. Bath was a honeypot for artists, full of intense energy in a rapid social flux, hugely fashionable and creative. It attracted vibrant and talented people many of whom, as their stars rose, were attracted to the idea of having their portraits painted while in their prime. Bath presented the perfect commercial and artistic context for Gainsborough.

Mr and Mrs Andrews 1750
A newly-married, wealthy young couple, the groom a
school friend, gaze at their own landscape.
Gainsborough pioneered portraits en plein aire.

He emerged gradually as both the foremost landscape and portrait painter of his generation, sharing the portrait honours with Joshua Reynolds. In fact they were jointly involved in establishing The Royal Academy in 1768 with Reynolds as its first President. It was not until Thomas moved to Bath that his career as a portraitist really took off and it was this area of his talent which pleased him most. His personality was such that life in the swirling energy of Bath, full of new ideas in architecture, theatre, fashion, medicine, music, totally suited him. He was handsome and elegant, with a “taste for carousing and a passion for music”, especially for his beloved viol da gamba [at one point, he owned no fewer than five] and he blossomed in his fast and fashionable social life. A contemporary wryly described him as "very lively, gay and dissipated."

Joshua Reynolds' self portrait. 1780.

"very lively, gay and dissipated." He eventually moved to London where he called ‘his crowd, the blackstocking fraternity” a group which included such famous people as Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Dr. Johnson, Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith.

A typical Gainsborough/Picturesque landscape

Far from the impoverished textile town in Suffolk where he began life, to the salons of Bath then increasingly, of London, he drew fashionable and wealthy clients, while submerging himself in a full life a la mode! Alongside his famous portraits which included Bach and George 111 and Queen Charlotte, he developed his landscape paintings during the 1770s and 1780s and is credited, with Richard Wilson, as being one of the originators of the eighteenth century British landscape school. One of Gainsborough's friends, Uvedale Price, a landscape designer, became one of the chief proponents of the Picturesque which developed during the second half of the eighteenth century, first introduced into the English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin.

Gainsborough's girls growing up.

It was part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18^th century for which his ‘landskips’ served as a supreme example.

Gainsborough's style of painting relied on his certainty of eye and his faultless draughtsman-ship. He was able to produce the most complex shapes by turning and rolling his brush across the canvas to create forms that are sometimes abstracted, though they fully express the shape of a detail in a figure or a plant. His loose, feathery style was perfect for painting textiles and again and again, light on velvet or lace or silk shimmers and captivates the viewer. James Hamilton in his splendid biography of Gainsborough, suggests that his waistcoats are a thing of wonder whether velvet, satin, brocade or serge, buttons undone or untidily straining across a well-fed stomach, a Gainsborough waistcoat speaks volumes. Hamilton is fascinated by Gainsborough's technique moving in his youth, and early portraits, from "dabbing" to what became his mature style of his characteristic loose sweeps and rolling brush strokes.