Thomas Gainsborough

1727-1788 • English • Painter • Grand Manner

"Gainsborough was tall, fair and handsome, generous, impulsive to the point of capriciousness, easily irritated, not of bookish likings, a lively talker, good at repartee. He was a most thorough embodiment of the artistic temperament." - William M. Rossetti, 1911

It was said that by the time he was 10 years old Gainsborough had "sketched every fine tree and picturesque cottage near Sudbury," his birth place. He was one of nine children. Unlike the usual passing of the mantle from father to son, it was Thomas's mother who painted and who encouraged him. Few paintings are more quickly recognized than Gainsborough's Blue Boy (c. 1770). The model is thought to be Jonathan Buttall, son of an ironmonger who owned property in Ipswich, where Gainsborough lived for a time. Gains borough was an admirer of van DYCK, whose formula for portraying English aristocracy-typically in shimmering silk, with one arm akimbo, hand on hip, cane or hat in the other-had lasting effect. It is thought that Gainsborough kept a "van Dyck costume" available in his studio. Speculation by an early 19th-century writer suggests that Blue Boy was painted to dispute Gains borough's archrival, REYNOLDS, who argued that a cool color such as blue could not dominate a picture. When Gainsborough moved to London, he shared court patronage with WEST and general favor with Reynolds. He persisted in painting landscapes, which did not sell, but he was an extremely successful portraitist. In 1785 he painted the beautiful fifth Duchess of Devon shire, a woman of scandalous sexual immorality. The painting vanished in 1806, mysteriously reappeared in 1841, was auctioned off in 1876 for $ 51,540 (then the highest auction price for a painting), and was stolen again by an American who planned to use it for ransom but fell in love with the image of the duchess. It was recovered in 1901 and sold to Pierpont Morgan for $150,000, auctioned off by his heirs in 1994, and went for $408,870 to the th Duke of Devonshire. Gains borough painted his friends-musicians, dramatists, and actors. Mrs.Siddons (1785) is a portrait of the actress (her real name was Sarah Kemble). Reynolds had painted her a year earlier as the "Tragic Muse." In Reynolds's picture she is distanced from the viewer and gazes theatrically into the heavens. Gainsborough's Mrs.Siddons is relatively down-to-earth, accessibly close to the PICTUREPLAN E; she is fashionably attired-in a blue-striped dress. Before Gainsborough died, at 61, he sought a reconciliation with Reynolds. In his Fourteenth Discourse, Reynolds paid "tribute" to his former foe, but it was a mean-spirited dig in which he said that during their last conversation Gains borough had "begun to see what his deficiencies were."