Thomas Gainsborough

Lore & Background

Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver, and his wife Mary. As a boy he demonstrated impressive drawing and painting skills; at age ten he was painting heads and small landscapes, including a miniature self-portrait. He left home in 1740 to study art in London, training under engraver Hubert Gravelot and associating with William Hogarth and his school. He assisted Francis Hayman in decorating the supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens.

In 1746 he married Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of the 3rd Duke of Beaufort, who had settled a £200 annuity on her. After a period in Sudbury and Ipswich, he moved to Bath in 1759, where he studied portraits by van Dyck and attracted a fashionable clientele. He sent work to the Society of Artists exhibitions and became a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1769, though his relationship with the academy was uneasy and he stopped exhibiting in 1773. In 1774 he moved to London, living at Schomberg House, Pall Mall. He resumed exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1777, and in 1780 painted portraits of King George III and Queen Charlotte.

Gainsborough died of cancer on 2 August 1788 at age 61. According to his daughter Peggy, his last words were 'van Dyck'. He is interred in the churchyard of St Anne's Church, Kew, Surrey, near his friend Joshua Kirby.

Reader's Guide

Thomas Gainsborough's significance lies in his dual mastery of portrait and landscape painting, which together shaped British art in the 18th century. Alongside Richard Wilson, he is credited as an originator of the British landscape school, while his portraits rival those of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His technique—characterised by speed, a light palette, and easy strokes—was noted by art historian Michael Rosenthal as both technically proficient and experimental. Gainsborough worked more from observation of nature than from formal academic rules, and his integration of sitters into landscape settings, as seen in his portrait of Frances Browne, Mrs John Douglas, marked a distinctive development in portraiture. His frustration with portrait commissions, expressed in letters, reveals a preference for landscape painting, which he pursued in his later years. He also experimented with printmaking using aquatint and soft-ground etching, and used a 'Showbox' to compose backlit landscapes. His legacy includes his influence on later artists such as John Constable, who remarked on the emotional effect of his paintings. Gainsborough's tomb in Kew was restored in 2012.

Did You Know?

• Gainsborough was a keen viol da gamba player and owned five of the instruments, three made by Henry Jaye and two by Barak Norman.
• He used a device called a 'Showbox' to compose landscapes and display them backlit on glass; the original box is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
• His daughter Molly married musician Johann Christian Fischer in 1780, but the marriage lasted only eight months due to discord and Fischer's deceit.
• Gainsborough's last words, according to his daughter Peggy, were 'van Dyck'.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Thomas Gainsborough (baptised 14 May 1727 - 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker." — Thomas Gainsborough "..though I'm a rogue in talking upon Painting and love to seem to take things wrong I can be serious and honest upon any subject thoroughly pleasing to me." — Thomas Gainsborough "Many a real genius is lost in the fictitious character of the Gentleman. I am the most inconsistent, changeable being so full of fits and starts." — Thomas Gainsborough "One part of a picture ought to be like the first part of a tune, that you guess what follows, and that makes the second part of the tune, and so I'm done.." — Thomas Gainsborough