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Biography
Thomas Gainsborough is an English landscape and portrait painter, one of the great English masters. He was born in Sudbury, Suffolk in the family of a clothier. He showed an aptitude for drawing early and first was encouraged by his mother, who was a woman of well-cultivated mind and excelled in flower-painting. He used to spend a lot of time outdoors, drawing. In 1740, at the age of 13 he was sent to London to study art. He spent several years working in the studios of different artists, one of whom was Hubert Gravelot, a draughtsman and engraver, another one was a scene-painter and illustrator Francis Hayman.
In 1748 Gainsborough presented The Charterhouse (1748) to the Foundling Hospital, it was a way for the artist to show one of his works, because at that time there were no other possibilities for young artists. In 1746 Gainsborough married Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of Duke of Beaufort. His wife brought the family an annuity of £200, which enabled him to start his career as a portrait-painter in Ipswich.
He first did not have many commissions there and had a lot of time to indulge in his favorite pursuit: to draw landscapes. Also he created many beautiful pictures of his wife and daughters such as Self-Portrait with His Wife, Margaret (probably) (1746-1747), Thomas Gainsborough, with His Wife and Elder Daughter, Mary, (About 1751-2), The Painter's Daughters, Margaret and Mary, Chasing Butterfly, (about 1756), The Painter's Daughters, Margaret and Mary, Holding a Cat, (About 1759). The most notable portraits of that period are Robert Andrews and His Wife Frances (about 1748-49), Heneage Lloyd and His Sister (1750s), William Wollaston. (about 1758-1759). (continued on the bottom)
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After he moved to Bath, Gainsborough had less time for landscape and worked a good deal from memory, often drawing by candlelight from little model landscapes set up in his studio. About 1760 Peter Paul Rubens supplanted the Dutch painters as Gainsborough's chief love. This is particularly noticeable in Peasants Returning from Market, with its rich colour and beautiful creamy pastel shades. The influence of Rubens is also apparent in The Harvest Wagon in the fluency of the drawing and the scale of the great beech trees so different from the stubby oaks of Suffolk. The idyllic scene is a perfect blend of the real and the ideal. The group in the cart is based on Rubens' Descent from the Cross (1611-14) in Antwerp cathedral, which Gainsborough copied.
In 1774 he moved to London and settled in part of Schomberg House in Pall Mall. Fairly soon he began to be noticed by the royal family and partly because of his informality and Tory politics was preferred by George III above the official court painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1781 he was commissioned to paint the King and Queen.
A new venture in 1783 was The Mall in St. James' Park, a park scene described by Horace Walpole as all a flutter like a lady's fan. The Morning Walk, with romanticized figures strolling in a landscape, is painted in the same spirit. The fancy pictures painted in the 1780s gave Gainsborough particular pleasure. They are full-sized, idealized portraits of country children and peasants painted from models - for example, The Cottage Girl with a Bowl of Milk. The idea appeared in immature form in the little rustic Suffolk figures, and he may have been fired to exploit it further by seeing the 17th-century Spanish painter Bartolomé Murillo's St. John, which he copied. He died in 1788 and was buried in Kew churchyard.