Thomas Gainsborough, R.A.

Miss G.L. Young;

R.H. Young;

sale, London, Christie's, 11 June 1937, lot 52, bt Colnaghi;

by whom sold to J. Leslie Wright (1862-1953),

by descent to Colonel P.L.M. Wright, London, by 1970,

by descent until,

sale, London, Christie's, 2 July 2013, lot 40,

where acquired by Jimmy Younger (1928-2022), Houston,

his estate sale, New York, Sotheby's, 31 January 2024, lot 257

M. Woodall, Gainsborough's Landscape Drawings, London 1939, p. 36, no. 403;

J. Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, London 1970, pp. 50 & 189, no. 345, pl. 284.

Birmingham, City Art Gallery, Early English Watercolours from the Collections of J. Leslie Wright and Walter Turner, 1938, no. 92;

London, Royal Academy, Collection of Masters of British Watercolour - Exhibition of the J. Leslie Wright Collection, 1949, no. 91;

Aldeburgh, Aldeburgh Festival, 1949, no. 91 (according to a label on the backboard);

London, Royal Academy, Winter Exhibition: European Masters of the Eighteenth Century, 1954-55, no. 540;

London, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Gainsborough Drawings, 1960-61, no. 21.

Gainsborough, born and raised in rural Suffolk, had a deep love for the countryside, its people and its ways. Despite his stratospheric success as a portrait painter, it was his work as a landscape artist that gave him particular pleasure and served as a release from the pressures of portraying high society. He is said to have regarded his drawings as finished works of art in their own right and they were much admired by his contemporaries. His friend William Jackson (d. 1803) went as far as to declare that 'if I were to rest his [Gainsborough’s] reputation upon one point, it should be on his drawings. No man ever possessed methods so various in producing effect, and all were excellent.'¹  

The present work dates to the early 1770s and is a fascinating example of the enormously experimental nature of his drawings by this time. A surviving letter, written in January 1773 by Gainsborough to the above mentioned Jackson, gives us a privileged insight into the closely guarded secrets of his working methods. He begins by stating that: ‘there is no man living… (besides yourself and one more…) that shall ever know my secret of making those studies you mention’. He then continues: ‘… take half a sheet of blotting paper such as the Clerks and those that keep books… Paste that and half a sheet of white paper, of the same size, together, let them dry, and in that state keep them for use – take a Frame of deal about two Inches larger every way, and paste, or glue, a few sheets of very large substantial paper, no matter what sort, thick brown, blue or any; then cut out a square half an inch less than the size of your papers for Drawing; so that it may serve for a perpetual stretching Frame for your Drawings; that is to say after you have dip’t [sic] your drawings as I shall by & by direct in a liquid, in that wet state you are to take, and run some hot glue and with a brush run round the border of your stretcher, gluing about half an Inch broad which is to receive your half an Inch extraordinary allow’d for the purpose in your drawing paper, so that when that dries, it may be like a drum. Now before you do anything by way of stretching, make the black & white of your drawing, the Effect I mean, disposition in rough, Indian Ink shaddows [sic], your lights of Bristol made white lead which you buy in lumps at any house painters; saw it in the size you want for your white chalk, the Bristol is harder and more the temper of chalk than the London. When you see your Effect, dip it all over in skim’d milk, put it wet on [your] Frame (just glued as before observed to) let it dry, and then you correct your [illegible] with Indian Ink, if you want to add more lights, or other, do it and dip again, till all your Effect is to your mind; then tinge in your greens your browns with sap green, Bistre, your yellows with Gall stone, blue with fine Indigo’. Finally, Gainsborough recommended varnishing the work ‘3 times with Spirit Varnish such as I sent you, though only Mastic & Venice Turpentine is sufficient, then cut out your drawing but observe it must be Varnished both sides to keep it flat.’²

1. J. Hayes and L. Stainton, Gainsborough Drawings, Washington 1983, p. 15
2. J. Hayes, The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, New Haven and London 2001, pp. 110-111