Thomas Gainsborough
(1727-1788), Portrait and landscape painterSitter in 8 portraits
Artist associated with 262 portraits
Landscape and portrait painter. Gainsborough worked in his native Sudbury and then Ipswich until 1759 when he moved to Bath and established a fashionable portrait practice. Settling in London in 1774, he was Joshua Reynolds's only real rival as a portrait painter. Gainsborough quarrelled with the Royal Academy over the exhibition of his pictures; he was highly-strung in personality, a lively letter writer and devoted to music. Garrick said 'his cranium is so crammed with genius of every kind that it is in danger of bursting on you like a steam engine overcharged'.
More on Gainsborough: Gainsborough's Family Album
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George Bridges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney
by Richard Josey, published by Henry Graves, after Thomas Gainsborough
mezzotint, published 1874
NPG D14244
John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll
by Robert Bowyer Parkes, published by Henry Graves, after Thomas Gainsborough
mezzotint, published 1877
NPG D15047
Related People
- Gainsborough Dupont (nephew)
- Mary Fischer (née Gainsborough) (daughter)
- Margaret Gainsborough (née Burr) (wife)
- Margaret Gainsborough (daughter)
Links
- All paintings by this artist on the Art UK website
- Barber, Institute of Fine Arts, Edgbaston, Midlands
- Blue plaque, 82 Pall Mall, St James's, London SW1Y 5ES
- Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Whitby, North Yorkshire
- Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, Suffolk
- Gainsborough's House, Sudbury, Suffolk
- Knole, Sevenoaks, Kent
- Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
- Sudley House, Liverpool, Merseyside
- Thomas Gainsborough in the Oxford Index
- Waddesdon Manor-the Rothschild Collection, Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire
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- Gainsborough's Family Album
Until 9 June