Gainsborough, THOMAS, portrait and landscape painter, one of the greatest of English artists, was born at Sudbury, Suffolk, in 1727, the day of his baptism being the 14th of May. His father, a well-to-do clothier and crapemaker, had him educated at the grammar-school of the place, where Mr Burroughs, the boy's uncle, was master; and, as he was never happy but when sketching the rustic scenery around him, he was sent to London, at the age of fourteen, to study art under Gravelot, the excellent French engraver and designer of book-illustrations, under Frank Hayman, and in the St Martin's Lane Academy. He returned to his native county about 1744, established himself as a portrait-painter at Ipswich, and in 1745 married Margaret Burr, a lady with £200 a year. He was patronised by Sir Philip Thicknesse, the governor of Landguard Fort, a view of which, afterwards engraved by Major, he was commissioned to paint. Through the advice of his friend, he removed in 1760 to Bath, where Thicknesse had influence, and where there was a promising opening for a skilful portrait-painter. Here he won the public by his portrait of Earl Nugent; numerous commissions followed, and in 1761 he began to exhibit with the Society of Artists of Great Britain, in Spring Gardens, London, a body which he continued to support till 1768, when he became a foundation member of the Royal Academy, from which he afterwards practically retired, owing to what he considered the unworthy place that had been assigned to his group of 'The King's Daughters' in the exhibition of 1784. In 1774, after a deadly quarrel with Thicknesse, he removed to London, establishing his studio in a portion of Schomberg House, Pall Mall, and there prosecuted his art with splendid success, being in portraiture the only worthy rival of Reynolds, and in landscape of Wilson. In 1788, while attending the trial of Warren Hastings, in Westminster Hall, he caught a chill from an open window, a cancerous tumour developed itself, and he died on the 2d of August, and was buried in Kew churchyard. Personally, Gainsborough possessed all the enthusiasm, the airy vivacity, the hot impulsiveness, that we commonly associate with the artistic temperament. He was devoted to art in every form. Fond of company, he loved to associate with players and musicians; he was himself a performer on various instruments, and for him Garrick was 'the greatest creature living, in every respect, worth studying in every action.' Quick of temper, he was also right generous both of hand and heart; and when the long-estranged Reynolds visited him on his death-bed, Gainsborough parted from him with the often-quoted words of perfect brotherhood: 'We are all going to heaven, and Van Dyck is of the company.'
The art of Gainsborough, compared with that of his great contemporary Reynolds, is less scholarly and more instinctive; his portraits show less deep insight into character than those of his rival, but they have perhaps even more of grace, give perhaps even more vivid glimpses of the shifting gesture and expression of the moment. Gainsborough never studied abroad, never left his native country; and though, at various times, he copied from Rubens, Teniers, Vandyke, and Rembrandt, he did so with no merely imitative aim. Nature herself was always before his eye, and nature he interpreted in a manner most individual. His earlier works are firmly and directly handled, with definite combinations of positive colouring; but as his art gained in power he sought more and more for harmony of total effect, for gradation and play of subtly interwoven hues; painting his flesh thinly, but with great certainty of touch, with exquisite refinement of modelling, and with the most delicate transparency in the shadows; and relieving it by the shifting sheen of his draperies, and by backgrounds of swiftly struck, loosely touched foliage, and of softly blending tints of sky. While his landscapes were unduly preferred to his portraits by the—perhaps not unprejudiced—judgment of Reynolds, they too possess admirable artistic qualities, in their freedom of handling and harmony of colour and effect. Though, as Mr Ruskin has truly noted, they are 'rather motives of feeling and colour than earnest studies,' they have still value as faithful records of a distinctly personal impression of nature; and while Richard Wilson developed with delicate skill the traditions of Claude, Gainsborough may, in some sense, be regarded as the forerunner of Constable, as the founder of the freer and more individual landscape art of our own time.
Gainsborough is excellently represented in the National Gallery, London, by fourteen works, including portraits of 'Mrs Siddons,' of 'Orpin the Parish Clerk,' and of 'Ralph Schomberg, M.P.,' and 'The Market Cart,' and 'The Watering-place;' in the National Portrait Gallery, London, by five works; in the Dulwich Gallery by six works, including the portraits of 'Mrs Sheridan' and 'Mrs Tickell;' and in the National Gallery of Scotland by the portrait of the 'Hon. Mrs. Graham.' An exhibition of over 200 of his works was held in London in 1885. 'The Market Cart' fetched 4500 guineas in 1894. 'The Countess of Mulgrave,' sold in 1880 for £1000, brought £10,000 in 1895.
See Life by Fulcher (1856), Wedmore's Studies (1876), Brock-Arnold's Gainsborough and Constable (1881), the Catalogue by Horne (1891), Armstrong's Portfolio monograph (1896), and the book by Mrs Bell (1897).