Book Description

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), admired for his grand society portraits and sumptuous pastoral landscapes, is the most perennially popular of British artists. In his life as in his art, Gainsborough sought to project an image of effortless accomplishment, demonstrated by a dazzling painting technique and immense personal charm. He was also competitive, opinionated, and financially astute. Because he was among the most innovative and enigmatic artists of his age, the true nature of his achievement is at once greatly appreciated and insufficiently understood.

This illustrated introduction to the artist and his work traces Gainsborough's career from his boyhood in rural Suffolk to the pinnacle of commercial success at the court of George III. Martin Postle examines the tremendous impact on Gainsborough's career of the Royal Academy and the Court of St. James. Postle also reassesses the artist's attitudes toward the central aspects of his art: portraiture (which he called his profession) and landscape (which he called his pleasure). While revealing Gainsborough in the light of his own day, this attractive book also highlights the timelessness of his work--the celebrated brushwork, lyrical composition, and almost miraculous use of color.

Book Description
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) was one of the masters of 18th-century art. This stunning book, published to accompany a major international exhibition, covering the artist's entire career, reveals the sheer range, quality, and originality of Gainsborough's work, from his engagingly naturalistic landscapes and touching images of children to his sophisticated and glamorous society portraits.

In their revealing essay, Michael Rosenthal and Martin Myrone explore Gainsborough's dynamic involvement with the social world of his day, while other essays explore his subtle approach to the lucrative world of fashionable portraiture and the often pointed social commentary behind his seductive landscapes. This volume provides new and refreshing insights into Gainsborough as an artist who succeeded in creating an experimental and modern art for his own time, and whose works remain vital and rewarding today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Great Artist
I was totally amazed at the extra-ordinary talent of Thomas Gainsborough. He is truly one of the all-time great artist. I appreciated the fact that his paintings were shown in color. This book also gave a thorough description of his life. I am happy I purchased this book!

Dwight

To remember past emotions...
This catalogue contains beautiful reproductions of all the drawings and paintings from the last great Gainsborough's exhibition. It helps to remember the emotions I've felt in front of the true works. Every notice is sensitive and informative. And all texts are from eminent specialists. I just regret that bibliography doesn't refer to the old great Paris exhibition. ... Read more

Book Description
This is the first introduction to the art and life of Thomas Gainsborough to appear for many years. Gainsborough has long been an attractive and popular figure in the history of English art, but this book shows that he was more than the well-known painter of The Blue Boy and the perennial rival to Joshua Reynolds.His role as a prototype for the modern idea of "the artist as Romantic" is discussed, while his deep knowledge of the art of the past is revealed to demonstrate his eclectic yet individual reworking of older styles. An introduction and seventy-five carefully selected paintings and drawings explain Gainsborough's life and art and his important role in the development of an independent English school.Both text and illustrations provide a unique up-to-date and perceptive survey that will be of interest to the scholar and general reader alike. ... Read more

Book Description
In this sumptuously illustrated book, Michael Rosenthal provides alively account of Thomas Gainsborough's varied life and diverse artworks. Rosenthalexamines the artist's portraits, landscapes, and fancy pictures, works of extraordinarybeauty and complexity. The book also considers for the first time Gainsborough's entirebody of works and how his career reflected problems and situations common amongpainters in eighteenth-century England. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Skip this book
The book cover states that the book is lavishly illustrated; the cover is but not the book. It is not up to Yale standards.The photographs are small and blurry, often the colors are incorrect.Please wait for a good CatalogueRaisonne. As for the text, so many years of good research wasted. The textis ponderous, poorly written with endless sentences full of quotes andinserts.The author is critical , judgemental and constantly makesassumptions or gives personal and mostly unsubstanciated opinions. It isanother book for Art History students (the author is an Art Historyteacher) not for lovers of paintings. I returned the book to Amazon.

Much more than "A Little Business for the Eye"
Both the serious art scholar and the general reader will appreciate this visual and textual treat of a book which is truly "The Art of Thomas Gainsborough." Many of the plates I had not seen reproduced inprevious books on Gainsborough, and Rosenthal's view of Gainsborough, thathe was much more serious an artist and business man than he or hiscontemporaries saw him. I first went through this book, feasting my eyes onall the plates(most of which are in color and beautifully reproduced),which are roughly divided between Gainsborough's portraits, which hepainted to meet market demand and pay the bills and his landscapes which hepainted for pleasure.Rosenthal's plates also include details from certainpaintings, so that the reader can study Gainsborough's brushwork and seeclearly why much of his work suffers when hung from the wrong height or isviewed too close to.

While this book is roughly chronological, it is nota biography of Gainsborough, it is a biography of his work. Rosenthaltraces Gainsborough's art from his beginings in Sudbury, his training andapprenticeship, early work in London, move to Bath as a better market tomake money and perfect his skill as a portrait painter, and final move toLondon, resulting in his popularity as a portrait painter, establishment asa painter-courtier to the Royal Family and unofficial portraitist tomembers of the same,the near annual battles with the hanging commitee ofthe Royal Academy on the proper hanging of his submitted works, which ledto his breaking with the academy as a member, his failures to sell many ofhis beloved landscape paintings, and his first serious attempt to create ahistorical painting in the final months of his life.

Original to thiswork on Gainsborough is the central theme that Gainsborough, like hisfellow English artists, had to paint to the market demands, which inEngland meant portraits sold, while landscapes and history paintingsgenerally did not.That meant pleasing the clientele without "sellingout," something Gainsborough found sometimes difficult to do. Artistsalso painted differently, often using brighter colors and altering thepaintings afterwards, to get their work noticed at the annual Royal Academyexibitions. Rosenthal includes illustrations of these overcrowdedexibitions(both in paintings exibited hung floor to ceiling, and the crowdsof people viewing them)to give the reader an idea of why Gainsborough andother artists were often unhappy with the hanging committees decisions onwhere their paintings were hung.

Most fascinating is the chapter"Faces and Lives" where Rosenthal compares and contrasts not onlyGainsborough's multiple portraits of the same subject, but also withportraits of the same subject done by his rival, and President of the RoyalAcademy, Sir Josah Reynolds. Reynold's more often painted his sitters in ahistoric style with the sitters' faces sometimes altered so thatacquintances didn't recognize them while Gainsborough's sitters were easilyrecognizable, if flattered. The prime example of this differences betweenthe two painters are their portraits, of the actress Sarah Siddons,reproduced side by side in the book. Reynolds painted her as the"Tragic Muse", on a throne-like chair, clad in classicaldraperies.Gainsborough's slightly later portrait depicted her perched ona dainty French chair, dressed in the latest fashion, gazing off intospace(contemplating her newest role, perhaps?)with the only clue to hercareer, a crimson curtain draped as background. ... Read more

Book Description
This new study on Thomas Gainsborough concentrates on the early life and works of the great eighteenth-century artist. Gainsborough's talent was evident at a young age, and before he established himself as one of London's leading portrait artists he was able to indulge himself in his true passion, landscapes, as well as providing portraits for a provincial clientele.

Graced with the light and gentle shadows of the English countryside, these early works provided the foundation for much of Gainsborough's later work. But many of them, including the renowned Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, and His Daughters Chasing a Butterfly, can be called masterpieces in their own right. It was in Suffolk that the artist developed a naturalistic approach to portraiture by abandoning "conversation pieces" and painting instead a number of straightforward head-and-shoulder portraits. This lively and accessible volume features eighty color and black-and-white reproductions of Gainsborough's paintings, etchings, and drawings. They not only shed light on the development of one of England's most revered painters, but also offer an intimate look at the work of a young painter in the thrall of his subjects, and just beginning to realize his full talents. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Belsey Offers a Compelling Portrait of Early Gainsborough
This is an engaging book focusing on the earlier landscape paintings and portraits completed in Ipswich and Bath. The observations on the details of the paintings are acute and perceptive. The author illuminates with a thorough knowledge of the social mores and conventions of 18th Century England. For painters and artists, the insights on formal composition and color are instructive.

The narrative text is laced with a wit, humor, and irony that perhaps one can only find in an English art historian writing about a consummate English artist. The book is also mercifully focused and short, alleviating some of the bludgeon like tediousness of many art history tomes.

Thomas Gainsborough: A Country Life by Hugh Belsey
Mr Belsey has truimphed with this book - it is packed with detail that is conveyed in an accessible style of writing that enables the reader to absorb information whilst, at the same time, enjoying the whole experience. ... Read more

Book Description