Thomas Gainsborough "Wooded landscape with peasant courting a milkmaid"

The paintings of Gainsborough, like those of Sir Joshua Reynolds, are representative of eighteenth-century English culture. A founding member of the Royal Academy, he is celebrated for his blue-and-green based portraiture, preeminently represented by The blue boy, held by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and The portrait of Mrs. Tomas Graham in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

But portraits were not Gainsborough's first love; in fact, he painted them just to make ends meet. He once confided to King George 3 that he much preferred landscapes, but these did not sell well, and he gave vent to his disappointment by locking them all in a warehouse for a while, refusing to show them to anyone.

In due course, however, some customers did show their appreciation of the work Gainsborough most enjoyed creating. One was the Duke of Bedford, who in May 1755 commissioned two over-mantels for his stately home. Of these, one addressed the same theme as the work in our collection. Another version of this painting hangs in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada.

Before Gainsborough, British landscape artists had created utopian vistas inspired by biblical settings and by the classical scenery of Ancient Greece and Rome. Gainsborough broke new ground by putting onto canvas the countryside around his home in Suffolk. His inspiration was the naturalism espoused by the Dutch school, which he admired. Yet his paintings also convey a sense of elegance. Perhaps this reflects the influence of Watteau and other French rococo artists, an influence that appears in Gainsborough's treatment of both trees and human figures.

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Thomas Gainsborougha
(1727-1788)
Wooded landscape
with peasant courting a milkmaid

around 1755-59
Oil on canvas
85×112cm