GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS, born in 1727, at Sudbury in Suffolk, was one of the most eminent English landscape-painters of the last century. His father being a person in narrow circumstances, the education which his son received was very scanty ; and it is probable enough that in his boyish days he passed much lees time at school than in the woods of Suffolk, where he acquired that relish for the beauties of quiet nature and that intimate acquaintance with them for which his early pictures are so peculiarly distinguished. Having almost from his childhood amused himself with sketching any object that struck his fancy, an old tree, a group of cattle, a shepherd and his dog, &c., he ventured on colouring, and had painted several land scapes before he was fourteen years of age, when he was sent to London. There he was for some time with Mr. Gravelot, the engraver, and Hayman, the painter, with whom he did not remain long, but, setting up as a portrait-painter, enpported himself, till at the age of nineteen he married a young lady who had a fortune of 200/. per annum. On his marriage he went to Ipswich, where he resided till 1760, when he removed to Bath. Having practised portrait-painting with increasing success, ho removed in 1774 to London ; and having painted portraits of some of the royal family, which were much admired, he soon acquired extensive practice and proportionate emolument. But though his portraits were much valued at the time as striking likenesses, this was too frequently their chief merit : they were often painted in a rough careless manner, in a style of hatching and scrambling entirely his own, producing indeed an effect at a distance, hut undetermined and indistinct when viewed near. At times he would take more pains, and show what he could do. But Gainsborongh in fact considered this loose manner as so peculiarly characteristic, if not excellent, that be was desirous that his pictures in the exhibition might be so hung as to be within reach of close inspection. Oainsborough was one of the thirty-six members chosen at the foundation of the Royal Academy, and at the first exhibition of the academy in the following year he contributed two portraits, a boy's head and a large landscape.
The fame of Gainaborough now rests on his landscapes, to the painting of which he more and more devoted himself from the time of his removal to London ; and what might bo called fancy-pieces, such as the celebrated Cottage-Door,' now in the collection of the Marqnie of Westminster. But in speaking of his landscapes, there must be remarked a striking difference between his early and his later performances. In the former every feature is copied from nature in great detail, and yet without stiffness; so that they, in a measure, look like nature itself reflected in a convex mirror. In his latter works striking effect, great breadth and judicious distribntion of light and shade, and depth, glow, and richness of colour, produce a grand and even a solemn impression. Both styles have their admirers ; but in the present fashionable tendency to minute imitation, Oainsborough'a most highly-detailed early landscape would be probably regarded as coarse and unfinished. Oainsborough may not deserve to be ranked, as some would have him, with Vandyck, Rubens, and Claude, in portrait and in landscape, yet all will assent to the opinion of Sir Joshua Reynolds-" That if ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to esquire to us the honourable distinction of an English school, the name of Oainsborough will be transmitted to posterity as one of the very first of that rising name." He was in fact the first really original English landscape-painter. Every work of his pencil bears upon it a marked impress. A landscape by Gainsborough-even though one of his earlier works-is never a mere view of a particular spot, but a poetic rendering of the scene as coloured by the imagination of the artist, and a realisation, as far as may be, of the idea it has assumed in his mind.
Claineborough died of a cancer in the neck, August 2nd, 1788, in the sixty-first year of his age.
(Cunningham, Lives of British Painters; Fuleher, Life of Gains borough, 1856.)