Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape artist associated with the Rococo and Romanticism movement. He lived from 1727 to 1788.
Gainsborough grew up in Sudbury northeast of London. His childhood house, known as the Gainsborough House, is still extant and is a museum today. His early interest and skill in art got his father’s approval to travel to London at age 13 to begin an art apprenticeship under an engraver. However, soon after his arrival, he became involved with William Hogarth’s school.
After his marriage to Margaret Burr in 1746, Gainsborough focused on creating and selling art through his landscape works. Between 1748 and 1749, he moved back home to Sudbury with his growing family. Though he preferred landscapes, Gainsborough needed to make money, so he started accepting commissioned portrait work. The demand for portraits was much more plentiful.
In 1759, Gainsborough moved his family to Bath, a much larger and more cosmopolitan place with more work potential. By 1761, Gainsborough was painting portraits of more prominent people, and began showing his work at the Society of Arts (later reformed into the Royal Academy of Arts) exhibition in London. His art became more popular, and he was a sought-after portraitist.
Gainsborough has 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 landscapes and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease.” Towards the end of his career, Gainsborough returned to his first love of painting landscapes. Along with Richard Wilson, he is credited with starting the British landscape movement, landscape for landscape’s sake. When the Royal Academy was officially formed in 1769, Gainsborough became a founding member and from then until 1773, then again from 1777 to 1783, his portraits were displayed annually at their prominent exhibitions.
Gainsborough was quite prolific and was known for his ability to work quickly. He developed his own style of portraiture, including the sitter of the portrait within a landscape scene. This blend of portrait and landscape art allowed him to more easily enjoy the process of painting the constant flow of portraits he was commissioned to do. After painting portraits of King George III and his queen, Charlotte, in 1780, Gainsborough became the favorite portrait artist for the royal family. Interestingly however, Gainsborough’s art rival, Joshua Reynolds, won out the coveted position as the official court painter as he was the acting president for the Royal Academy of Art when the previous court painter had died.
On an interesting note, Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, the other very famous English portrait painter from this time period, were art rivals. Though Gainsborough was a favorite artist of the Royal Family, Reynolds was appointed the position of court artist. Their strong feelings against each other overshadowed a mutual respect. On Gainsborough’s deathbed, he asked to see Reynolds, who paid him this last visit. After Gainsborough’s death in 1788, Reynolds praised him in his art in his Fourteenth Discourse.
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