\paperw19995 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 English painter. \par
Thomas Gainsborough, the son of a well-to-do cloth merchant, was born at Sudbury (Suffolk) in 1727. The family
Æs relative prosperity allowed him to pursue the artistic bent that he had shown ever since his childhood, so that, at the age of thirteen, he went to study in London where he remained until 1748, assimilating the fashionable tendencies of the day. His e
arly works are chiefly landscapes, inspired by his study of seventeenth-century Dutch painters (\i Cornard Wood\i0 , 1748, London, National Gallery). It was the revival of the Flemish style of the seventeenth century and the charming French rococo of Fra
gonard and Watteau that took him away from his beloved landscape and made him take up portraiture, a genre that he cultivated with great success and which was far more remunerative. One of the artistÆs best-known portraits, the painting of \i Mr. and Mrs
. Robert Andrews\i0 (London, National Gallery), dates from the period he spent in Ipswich, the town where the painter had settled in the middle of the century. In 1759 Gainsborough moved to Bath, a famous watering place, where it was easier to meet rich
and ôfashionableö clients. It was at this time that he started to paint life-size portraits of aristocrats and wealthy members of the gentry, in a rich and warm palette derived from Van Dyck. His fame grew rapidly and gained him ever closer ties with Lo
ndon society, so that by 1774 Gainsborough had gone to live in the capital, where his works were shown at the Royal Academy. Among the portraits he painted in those years, it is worth mentioning the one of \i Ann Ford\i0 (Cincinnati, Museum of Art), and
those of her daughters (London, National Gallery), refined and aristocratic works. The portraits he painted for the royal family made him the only true rival to the celebrated artist Joshua Reynolds. However, the painterÆs interest in the landscape rema
ined strong, and Gainsborough introduced it in idealized form as a backdrop to many of his portraits. In 1784, a disagreement with the Academy led him to withdraw all his works from that institution. From then on, and until his death in 1788, he only hel
d private shows in his residence on Pall Mall, Schomberg House.
