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Artist or Maker: Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (1727-1788)
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Provenance: Dr. Thomas Monro; Christie's, London, 26-28 and 1 July 1833, possibly lot 75 or 174.
William Esdaile (L. 2617); Christie's, London, 19-21 or 24 March 1838, unidentified lot number.
J.P. Heseltine; Sotheby's, London, 29 May 1935, lot 411, illustrated (to Meatyard).
with Frost and Reed, London.
Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 8 July 1986, lot 98 (sold to Woodner).
Ian Woodner Family Collection; Christie's, London, 11 November 1999, lot 3.
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Literature: J.P. Heseltine, Original Drawings by British Painters in the Collection of J.P.H.(esletine), London, 1902, no.18, illustrated.
M. Woodall, Gainsborough's Landscape Drawings, London, 1939, p. 70, no. 234.
J. Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, London, 1970, p. 257, no. 646.
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Notes: This drawing is one of the finest drawings executed by Gainsborough in the 1780s. It is a rare example of the artist's use of colour in a late drawing, a technique he experimented with more in the 1770s.
Gainsborough's aim was in common with many of his contemporaries who desired to raise the status of watercolour in the eyes of the art establishment.
Hayes dates the drawing to the mid to later 1780s and comments that the treatment of the foliage and the chalk and the stump work are closely related to J. Hayes, op cit., no. 640 (Rotterdam, Museum Boymans - van Beuningen, E5).
Gainsborough drawings were experiments in composition and his diverse arrangements of trees, pools, sheep, track and cottages were frequently rearranged to form lilting landscapes, something 'easy for the eye' as he called the effect in one letter. He used soft chalk, sometimes blurred to form tone with the use of the stump - a densely rolled piece of card or leather - which imitates wash. In the 1780s he used dense black chalk often very thickly which gives the drawings a power which had not been seen in his earlier work.
Unusual for this period, when most of Gainsborough's drawings were monochrome, is the light application of watercolour washes.
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