Word: gainsborough
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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Last evening in Sanders Theatre Mr. Humphrey Ward lectured on Romney, who with Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough formed the great trio of English artists in the eighteenth century. The substance of the lecture, the last of Mr. Ward's extremely interesting and instructive series, was as follows...
...Thomas Gainsborough was born in 1727 at Sudbury, in Suffolk. As a school boy he often played the truant to ramble through the country making sketches of the woods and fields. At the age of fourteen he was sent to London, where he was apprenticed to an engraver named Gravelot. He soon gave up this place and went to the artist Hayman, who must have been a bad master for so impulsive a lad as Gainsborough. At nineteen he returned home and had the good fortune to marry the beautiful and accomplished Margaret Burr...
Shortly after his marriage Gainsborough set up as a portrait painter. He owed his start to Sir Philip Fickness, who introduced him to a great many fashionable people, whose portraits he painted. During the time he lived in Suffolk he painted a great many landscapes, which show the first signs of his manner. He possessed a wonderful pictorial memory and there was scarce a tree or bush or rambling brook in the neighborhood that he could not sketch while in his studio. His work was not the result of observation alone, but modelled much after the Dutch school. His early...
...Gainsborough moved to Bath, where there was an excellent opening for an artist. He met with great success and his fame soon reached London, where he was asked to exhibit. Among the best portraits he did at this time were those of the Parish Clerk, David Garrick and Lady Mary Carr. In the country places around Bath, Gainsborough saw some pictures by Van Dyck, which revealed to him a new world of art. He greatly improved his treatment of draperies and imparted to them a superb depth of color. While at Bath, Gainsborough also painted a great many landscapes, which...
...Gainsborough left Bath and moved to London, a migration which was due to the well-meant but intolerable persecution of his friend Fickness. At London he was more successful than ever. The queen invited him to paint her portrait. He did it so well that he was asked to paint the portraits of all the royal family. In 1784 he sent a full length picture of the three princesses to the Royal Academy, which he requested to be hung on a line with the eye. This the officials refused to do, and the matter ended by his withdrawing the picture...