Gainsborough, Thomas (1727–1788)

In his portrait of his two daughters, Margaret and Mary Chasing a Butterfly, Gainsborough has produced one of his most natural and lyrical pictures.

English landscape and portrait painter. In 1760 he settled in Bath, where his elegant and subtly characterized society portraits brought great success. In 1774 he went to London, becoming one of the original members of the Royal Academy and the principal rival of Joshua Reynolds. He was one of the first British artists to follow the Dutch example in painting realistic landscapes rather than imaginative Italianate scenery, as in Mr and Mrs Andrews (about 1750; National Gallery, London).

Although he learned painting and etching in London, Gainsborough was largely self-taught. His method of painting – what Reynolds called ‘those odd scratches and marks ... this chaos which by a kind of magic at a certain distance assumes form’ – is full of temperament and life. The portrait of his wife (Courtauld Institute, London) and The Morning Walk (National Gallery) show his sense of character and the elegance of his mature work.

A constant tendency to experiment produced the remarkable ‘fancy pictures’ or imaginative compositions of his late years, Diana and Actaeon (Royal Collection), unfinished when he died, being an example. Hundreds of drawings, often in a mixture of media, show his continued pursuit of landscape for its own sake.

Early work and training Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, and began to paint while still at school. He went at an early age to London to study art, but returned to Suffolk at 19 and worked as a painter, first in Sudbury, then in Ipswich until 1753. In this period the Dutch paintings he copied and restored greatly helped to form his view of landscape, and the ‘conversation piece’, as practised by William Hogarth and others, may have suggested his open-air portrait groups, but already his own originality and ‘Englishness’ are clearly apparent. The Cornard Wood, View of Dedham, Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly (all National Gallery) are examples.

Bath Something of his early freshness disappeared after his move to Bath, centre of fashion, where he stayed from 1760 to 1774, busy mainly with portrait commissions. The paintings by Anthony van Dyck he saw at Wilton and other great houses suggested refinements of style and silvery colour.

London A foundation member of the Royal Academy and elected to its Council in 1774, Gainsborough moved that year to Schomberg House in London. Influenced in landscape by Rubens now, rather than by Ruisdael as in his youth, he produced the massing and play of light seen in The Market Cart (1786; National Gallery). His Blue Boy (San Marino, California) is a homage to van Dyck. The landscapes he painted for his own pleasure took on an imaginary look; rhythmic in movement, the Harvest Wagon (Birmingham) already has this Utopian character.