THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (BRITISH, 1727-1788)
Trees and valley
pencil on paper
18.5 x 10 cm (7 1/4 x 4 in.)

Provenance
Perhaps Abram Constable of Wormingford (1742–1812)
R.B. Beckett (1891-1970), by 1956; thence by descent to the present owner.

Exhibited
perhaps John Constable, 1776–1837, introduction by R. B. Beckett, Manchester City Art Gallery, April to June 1956

This small sheet, which at one time was tipped into an album, shows a track leading to a stile with a pair of young trees to the right of the composition. The ground falls away towards a distant hill and on the right part of a house is shown. It was clearly drawn at speed with the branches of the tree described with the sharp edge of the pencil in angular lines that contrast with the foliage shown as soft loops of different strengths that give a sense of recessional depth. Lower down the shadow beside the house is made from shading using straighter scribbles that become darker nearer the ground. The fence and the posts on the right are indicated by a variety of strokes and shading that give them some solidity. Ronald Beckett attributed the drawing to John Constable—whose correspondence he assiduously edited—but comparisons with Gainsborough’s drawings from the late 1750s have established that the earlier artist is the draughtsman of this sheet.

Similar strokes of foliage and shading are shown in the study of a tree of about the same date now in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (PD 652-1991; John Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, London 1970, no. 171) and a contemporary drawing of a fence panel, more detailed, is in the Courtauld Gallery in London (3884; Hayes 1970, no. 164, pl. 50).

The subject was chosen late in Gainsborough’s career when he painted the Haymaker and Sleeping Girl, now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (53.2553; Hugh Belsey, Thomas Gainsborough, the portraits fancy pictures and copies after old masters, New Haven and London 2019, no. 1069, repr. col.), which is rehearsed in a drawing in the British Museum (1906,0707.1; Hayes 1970, no. 847, pl. 230).

We are grateful for Hugh Belsey for kind his assistance with the cataloguing this lot. The present drawing will be included in a future addenda to John Hayes' catalogue of drawings.

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