Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough’s early paintings clearly betray the influence of Netherlandish landscape painting of the seventeenth century. The Dutch painters were highly admired at the time, and Gainsborough was able to study their works in many private collections. He did not visit the Netherlands until late in his life. The young painter started out by emulating the everyday subjects and seemingly simple compositions of his Dutch colleagues. Their example helped him to hone his skills at a time when English contemporary painting was often still quite

provincial. Gainsborough managed in this way to achieve great clarity and depth in his landscapes. The paintings capture atmospheres and compellingly evoke specific moods. Even though the scenes are largely imaginary, they suggest harmony and the direct observation from nature.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788),:Landschaft mit Hirten, um 1746/47 Öl auf Leinwand, 49 x 65,5 cm ,Sudbury, Gainsborough`s House Society

Under the theme Rendering Reality, the exhibition compares and contrasts early works by Gainsborough such as Holywells Park with Netherlandish landscapes from the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. This juxtaposition demonstrates how the artist learnt a great deal about composition, perspective and atmospheric representation from his Netherlandish colleagues, leading him to value landscape as a conveyer of mood. Like other English artists of the early eighteenth century, Gainsborough followed the European tradition closely and yet used it as a springboard for developing his own novel style. He was particularly interested in how humans relate to the landscape around them, in their close connection with and empathetic experience of nature, which found expression in the concept of the “sensibility”.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788): Holywells Park, um 1748–1750, Öl auf Leinwand, 50,8 x 66 cm, Ipswich Museum and Gallery © Ipswich Museum and Gallery

The second chapter on The Social Landscape highlights how Gainsborough’s landscape art subtly reflected the major social upheavals of his day. What at first glance seem like bucolic scenes betray upon closer inspection signs of poverty and despair as the artist attempts in each picture to convey a subject and a new rendering for which no clear-cut formula had yet been invented. The increasing privatisation of common agricultural land during Gainsborough’s lifetime deprived large parts of England’s rural population of their livelihood, forcing peasants to migrate to the cities and hire themselves out as cheap labour. In a simultaneous development, ownership of large estates became a status symbol. Gainsborough addressed these trends from both the point of view of the propertied class and that of the newly impoverished. The rural exodus would become a central theme in his late landscapes, such as his masterpiece The Harvest Wagon.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788): Waldlandschaft mit Wagen (»Der Erntewagen«), um 1766, Öl auf Leinwand, 120,7 x 144,8 cm, Birmingham, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts © The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham

Technical advances during this era, chief among them the development of the steam engine and the invention of the mechanical loom, laid the groundwork for early industrialisation. The exhibition illustrates in the third chapter on The Creative Process how the ideal of innovation equally prevailed in English painting. Gainsborough’s landscape art became a kind of technological and intellectual laboratory: in an effort to achieve the desired effects in his drawings and to continually push the boundaries of the genre, he experimented with different media and techniques such as aquatint and soft-ground etching and even used skim milk washes or painted images on glass. One of these highly fragile paintings on glass is featured in the exhibition, Coastal Landscape with Sailing Ships. Originally presented in a kind of peep-show box the artist had constructed, in the exhibition the painting is lit from behind to recreate this experience.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788): Küstenlandschaft mit Segelschiffen, um 1783, Öl auf Glas, 27,9 x 33,7 cm, London, Victoria and Albert Museum © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Gainsborough’s late works demonstrate just how radically he went about making light and colour the point of departure for his paintings. The mood and atmosphere of the scenes have now become the main subject. The figures can no longer be clearly distinguished from their surroundings. Individual outlines seem to dissolve. At »The Marsham Children« Gainsborough’s brush strokes are, in parts, so free and dynamic, that the borders of some pictorial elements

These paintings demonstrate a special quality: the painter’s brushstrokes can be seen clearly from up close, but when stepping back from the picture they meld to create a coherent image. Gainsborough had very precise ideas about the ideal height at which his works were to be hung in the galleries of the Royal Academy. In trying to guarantee that his pictures could unfold their optimal effect, he frequently got into arguments with the organisers of Academy exhibitions. Drawing on art historical traditions, Gainsborough developed a new aesthetic, one that would prove seminal for subsequent generations of artists.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788): Amelia Charlotte, Frances, Harriot und Charles Marsham (»Die Marsham-Kinder«), 1787, Öl auf Leinwand, 242,9 x 181,9 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie © bpk/Gemäldegalerie, SMB /Jörg P. Anders