Thomas Gainsborough was born in Suffolk and was the fifth son and ninth child of John and Mary Gainsborough. In 1774 the artist settled in London and became respected as a portraitist after establishing his own studio; alongside this success he was also developing an interest in landscapes and rustic scenes, with many of his most well-known portraits set across a background of complex and extensive landscapes. Despite his great triumph as a portraitist, it is well known that he maintained this love of landscape painting. For example, he wrote to a friend, William Jackson: 'I'm sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my Viol da Gamba and walk off to some sweet Village, where I can paint Landscapes and enjoy the fag End of life in quietness and ease' (in Woodall, p.115, no.56). After experiencing the fast-paced c moved to Ipswich in 1752 and settled in Bath as a portraitist in 1759.
Gainsborough became a leading painter of the late 18th Century and a founding member of the Royal Academy. William Hogarth and Francis Hayman, both of whom had significant stature in the art world at the time, were among those who had an important influence on Gainsborough. His developed and proven skill as a landscapist led to a desire from other artists to collaborate with him; for example, there are records of collaborations with Franic Hayman (1746) and Joshua Kirby (approximately 1748).
In his later years Gainsborough produced grand and large-scale depictions of nature. Fellow artist John Constable, paid tribute to his landscapes in 1836: “On looking at them, we have tears in our eyes, and know not what brings them.”
References:
Mary Woodall (ed.), The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, revised edition, 1963 Belsey, 'Gainsborough, Thomas', in C. Matthew et al. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 1992-, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10282
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (BRITISH, 1727-1788) Trees and valley, Estimate £4,000 - £6,000
A note from Hugh Belsey on Lot 270:
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.