Oil On Canvas, Real Flavor of Old Masters

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English Rococo Era/Romantic Painter, 1727-1788 English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: 'If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name.' He went on to consider Gainsborough's portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth.

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GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas Conversation in a Park sd oil painting artist


GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas Conversation in a Park sd oil painting artist

Conversation in a Park sd
Painting ID::  6765
GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas1.jpg
 
c. 1740 Oil on canvas, 73 x 68 cm Mus??e du Louvre, Paris

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GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas Mr and Mrs Andrews dg oil painting artist


GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas Mr and Mrs Andrews dg oil painting artist

Mr and Mrs Andrews dg
Painting ID::  6766
GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas2.jpg
 
1748-49 Oil on canvas, 70 x 119 cm National Gallery, London

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GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas Landscape in Suffolk sdg oil painting artist


GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas Landscape in Suffolk sdg oil painting artist

Landscape in Suffolk sdg
Painting ID::  6767
GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas3.jpg
 
c. 1750 Oil on canvas, 65 x 95 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas The Artist s Daughters with a Cat oil painting artist


GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas The Artist s Daughters with a Cat oil painting artist

The Artist s Daughters with a Cat
Painting ID::  6768
GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas4.jpg
 
1759-61 Oil on canvas, 75,6 x 62,9 cm National Gallery, London

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GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas Mary, Countess of Howe sd oil painting artist


GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas Mary, Countess of Howe sd oil painting artist

Mary, Countess of Howe sd
Painting ID::  6769
GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas5.jpg
 
1764 Oil on canvas, 244 x 152,4 cm Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London

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