(1727-1788)
Born in Sudbury, Suffolk, Gainsborough moved to London in1740, where he at first worked under Gravelot, the French book illustrator and engraver. He also met Hayman, then at work on his Vauxhall decorations. The small portrait groups Gainsborough painted at the beginning of his career seem to be influenced by Hayman and also the small portraits of Hogarth. Another influence at this stage of his development was his employment as a restorer and copier of Dutch seventeenth-century landscape paintings. His earliest landscapes are very close to works of Wynants, Ruisdael, and Hobbema, as is clear in Cornard Wood (1748, London, National Gallery). All his life Gainsborough considered landscape painting to be his real calling, but he painted portraits for a living. In 1759 he moved to Bath, the a highly fashionable town, probably to find more sitters for portraits, and his success made him the most sought after portrait painter there until his final move to London in 1774. He had exhibited in London before then and was sufficiently well known to be included among the original members of the Royal Academy founded by George III in 1768. He was later elected to the Council of the Academy. Gainsborough quarrelled with the Academy several times and eventually broke with it altogether.
Gainsborough moved to London in 1774 deliberately to set himself against his chief rival Reynolds. Adding particular irony to their rivalry was the fact that Reynold was knighted and the head og George III's own Academy, yet the entire royal family preferred Gainsborough, although Ramsay was Painter to the King until his death in 1784, at which time Reynolds succeeded to the title.
Contrary to the common practice of his time, Gainsborough painted all of his pictures himself, without assistants to paint drapery or other effects. Because he washed out his paint with turpentine to the consistency of watercolor, his paints have lasted better than many of the works of his contemporaries.
Cottage Pond and Moonlight
Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews (1750)
Portrait of Mary, Countess Howe (1760)
Portrait of Lady Alston (1765)
Portrait of Lady in Blue (1770)
Portrait of Mrs. Graham (1775)
Portrait of Mrs. Richard Brindsley Sheridan (1785-86)