Thomas Gainsborough
(England 1727–02 Aug 1788)
- Title
- A wooded landscape with a horse
- Year
- mid 1780s
- Media category
- Drawing
- Materials used
- black and white chalk on blue paper
- Dimensions
-
17.8 x 21.6cm sheet
- Signature & date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Parramore Purchase Fund 1995
- Accession number
- 30.1995
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
Although he was a successful portrait painter at Bath and London, Gainsborough's passion was for landscape drawing. He sketched endlessly to find a pleasing composition in which certain simple elements – road, pool, figures, cattle, trees – recur time and time again. Gainsborough's landscape drawings, with their swaying trees, blurred outlines and soft atmospheric effect, are not so much topographical records as poetic recreations. The blue paper provides the middle tone which is modulated by black chalk and white chalk.
- Bibliography (2)
-
Susan Sloman (Author), Gainsborough's landscapes, 2011, 70 (illus.), 71. fig.18
Renée Free (Australia) (Author), Forest and field: from Claude to the Barbizon School, Domain, 1995, 3 (illus.), 6.
- Exhibition history (2)
-
Forest and field: from Claude to the Barbizon School, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 14 Jul 1995–17 Sep 1995.
Old Europe: Prints & drawings from the collection 1500-1800, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 03 Jun 2006–06 Aug 2006.
