When Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) arrived in the spa town of Bath, England, at the age of thirty-one, he was an artist of modest reputation. When he left sixteen years later, he was recognized as one of Europe’s foremost painters. In this exceptional book, Susan Sloman examines for the first time how this transformation took place. She offers an entirely new view of Gainsborough’s development during his middle years as well as abundant new information about Bath and its role, for a few decades in the eighteenth century, as a cultural center of Europe.Drawing on freshly discovered documents and a variety of little-known contemporary published sources, Sloman illuminates artistic activity in Bath and Gainsborough’s part in it. She reveals how Gainsborough’s prominence as an artist and Bath’s as a cultural hub were intimately connected during a period in which the artist and his town flourished together.

Gainsborough in Bath

Arts & Photography

Sloman, Susan

History & Criticism

Paul Mellon Centre

Gainsborough's Landscapes brings together some of Gainsborough’s finest landscape oils and works on paper and examines them by looking at ""themes and variations"" within his landscape oeuvre. The oil paintings chosen represent six principal landscape types which are explored through drawings and prints that show how the artist developed the finished works.

Gainsborough's Landscapes: Themes and Variations

Philip Wilson Publishers

<p>A fuller, richer picture of an artist at the height of his powers\nThomas Gainsborough’s (1727–88) London years, from 1774 to 1788, were the pinnacle and conclusion of his career. They coincided with the establishment of the Royal Academy, of which Gainsborough was a founding member, and the city’s ascendance as a center for the arts. This is a meticulously researched and readable account of how Gainsborough designed his home and studio and maintained a growing schedule of influential patrons, making a place for himself in the art world of late-18th-century London. New material about Gainsborough’s technique is based on examinations of his pictures and firsthand accounts by studio visitors. His fractious relationship with the Royal Academy and its exhibition culture is reexamined through the works he sent to its annual shows. The full range of Gainsborough’s art, from fashionable portraits to landscapes and fancy pictures, is addressed in this major contribution, not just to the study of a great artist, but to 18th-century studies in general.</p>

Gainsborough in London

Modern Art Press

Based on new research this fascinating book draws together a group of works from public and private collections to examine, for the first time, the relationship that Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) had with the theatrical world and the most celebrated stage artists of his day, such as James Quinn, David Garrick and Sarah Siddons. Gainsborough painted notable portraits of these and twenty others, including dramatists, dancers and composers. This publication firmly establishes the artist's place within the theatrical worlds of Bath and London and will show why the art of ballet, and in particular Gainsborough's sitters, rose to prominence in 1780 and examines parallels between Gainsborough's much admired painterly naturalism and the theatrical naturalism of Garrick and Siddons with whom he had personal friendships.

Gainsborough and the Theatre

BELSEY, Hugh

British Portrait Miniatures from the Thomson Collection

Ad Ilissvm