Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), the son of a clothier, was born at
Sudbury, in Suffolk. The details of this master’s life are few and
uneventful. When between fourteen and fifteen years of age, his father
sent Thomas Gainsborough to London to study art. His first master
was Gravelot, a French engraver of great ability, to whose teaching
Gainsborough probably owed much. From him he passed to Hayman, in the
St. Martin’s Lane Academy, a drawing school only. Gainsborough began as
a portrait and landscape painter in Hatton Garden, but finding little
patronage during four years of his sojourn there, returned to his
native town. In 1760 he removed to Bath, and found a favorable field
for portrait painting, though landscape was not neglected. Fourteen
years later Gainsborough, no longer an unknown artist, came to London
and rented part of Schomberg House, Pall Mall. He was now regarded
as the rival of Reynolds in portraiture, and of Wilson in landscape.
Once, when Reynolds at an Academy dinner proposed the health of his
rival as “the greatest landscape painter of the day,” Wilson, who was
present, exclaimed, “Yes, and the greatest portrait painter, too.” One
of the original members of the Royal Academy, Gainsborough exhibited
ninety pictures in the Gallery, but refused to contribute after 1783,
because a portrait of his was not hung as he wished. A quick tempered,
impulsive man, he had many disputes with Reynolds, though none of them
were of a very bitter kind. Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy” is commonly said
to have been painted in spite against Reynolds, in order to disprove the
President’s statement that blue ought not to be used in masses. But there
were other and worthier reasons for the production of this celebrated
work, in respect to which Gainsborough followed his favorite Van Dyck in
displaying “a large breadth of cool light supporting the flesh.” It is
pleasant to know that whatever soreness of feeling existed between him
and Sir Joshua passed away before he died. This was in 1788. Gainsborough
was buried at Kew. The Englishness of his landscapes makes him popular.
Wilson had improved on the Dutch type by visiting Italy, but Gainsborough
sought no other subjects than his own land afforded. Nature speaks in his
portraits, or from his landscapes, and his rustic children excel those of
Reynolds, because they are really sun-browned peasants, not fine ladies
and gentlemen masquerading in the dresses of villagers. Mr. Ruskin says
of Gainsborough: “His power of color (it is mentioned by Sir Joshua as
his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens; he is
the purest colorist—Sir Joshua himself not excepted—of the whole English
school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and
exists not now in Europe. I hesitate not to say that in the management
and quality of single and particular tints, in the purely technical part
of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough.”