Tim Marlow TV - Thomas Gainsborough - This Green and Pleasant Land TV - National Gallery online - Fake or Fortune? TV - Simon Schama TV -
The Courtauld has a handful of eighteenth-century faces, painted mainly by English but occasionally Scottish painters ... but without doubt the best for me is this one by Thomas Gainsborough: it shows Gainsborough’s wife Margaret. Tim Marlow at the Courtauld 2/3
I am sick of portraits and wish very much to take up my viole da gambe and walk off to some sweet village when I can paint landscapes and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease. Thomas Gainsborough
Recollect that painting and punctuality mix like oil and vinegar, and that genius and regularity are utter enemies, and must be to the end of time. Thomas Gainsborough 1772
Thomas Gainsborough’s Mr & Mrs Robert Andrews is a thoroughly modern picture with a message. This Green and Pleasant Land: The Story of British Landscape Painting, BBC 2005
Gainsborough was, with Reynolds, the leading portrait painter in England in the later 18th century. The feathery brushwork of his mature work and rich sense of colour contribute to the enduring popularity of his portraits. Unlike Reynolds he avoids references to Italian Renaissance art or the antique, and shows his sitters in fashionable contemporary dress.
He was a foundation member of the Royal Academy, though he later quarrelled with it over the hanging of his pictures. He became a favourite painter of George III and his family.
He was born at Sudbury, Suffolk, the son of a wool manufacturer. He trained in London, and set up in practice in Ipswich about 1752. In 1759 he moved to Bath, a fashionable spa, attracting many clients for his portraits. He settled in London in 1774. His private inclination was for landscape and rustic scenes, and his amusing letters record his impatience with his clients’ demand for portraits. National Gallery online
Our two paintings are Imaginary Landscape by ‘a follower of Gainsborough’ at the Courtauld and A Portrait of Joseph Gape by an unknown artist at the St Albans Museum. Fake or Fortune? s3e4: Gainsborough BBC 2014
Over a third of all Gainsboroughs are now in America. ibid.
Imaginary Landscape: a Gainsborough drawing that has been overpainted by somebody else ... The portrait: Gainsborough. ibid.
Can we prove this is a lost work by one of the biggest names in British art, Thomas Gainsborough? Fake or Fortune? s8e1: The Lost Gainsborough, BBC 2019
Born in Suffolk in 1727, he made his reputation and his fortune as a society portrait painter. He was an artist of choice of the aristocracy. ibid.
Barker of Bath: a very competent artist who could emulate quite closely Gainsborough’s techniques. ibid.
Thomas Gainsborough: mighty of mind comes through feelings. Face of Britain by Simon Schama IV, BBC 2015