Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)
Gainsborough was a portraitist and landscape painter.
At the age of fourteen, Gainsborough left home to study art. For five years, he was trained by Francis Hayman, an English designer and portraitist and Hubert Francois Gravelot, a painter, illustrator, and engraver.
In his early thirties, he studied portraits by van Dyck. In 1769, he began submitting works to the Royal Academy of Arts (RA), an organization which he had help found. During the 1770s and 1780s, Gainsborough began to experiment with printmaking, specifically, aquatint and soft ground etching.
He also developed a new type of portrait, one that was integrated into the landscape. Historians believe he never actually went on site to develop these portraits, but instead used a device that he called a ‘showbox’ to compose landscapes and display them backlit on glass.
Among his famous portraits are The Painter’s Daughter Chasing A Butterfly, regarded by some as the best English portrait of children and The Blue Boy which he painted in the ‘formal’ manner. He used the color blue which went against the established conventions of Western traditions.
Blue/greens were believed to be receding colors suitable for backgrounds and a warm color scheme was considered most effective to enhance the subject of the work. Gainsborough was the most experimental artist of his time. He was technically proficient and worked fast from observation rather than from application of formal rules. His interest in painting ordinary human beings rather than for the trappings of power benefitted the art of portraiture.
