The Golden Age of English Painting

Thomas Gainsborough

1727 - 1788

Poetry Embodied in

Painting

Thomas Gainsborough’s birthplace, now a museum to his work, named Gainsborough House, Sudbury, Suffolk.

Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, an unassuming market town in Suffolk in this house in Sepulchre Street (now Gainsborough Street). He was the youngest son of the family of Gainsboroughs.

Thomas’ father did not oppose to his obvious vocation, and when the boy was 14 he went to London to study painting. For some time he studied under Gravelot.

London in Early 18th Century

In 1746 Gainsborough married Margaret Burr (born in 1728) when she was only 18, and he was but a year older.

Conversation in a Park (Self-Portrait with his Wife, Margaret (probably), 1746-1747, oil on canvas, Le Musée du Louvre, Paris, France

The Roman Termal Baths at Bath

In 1759 the Gainsborough family moved to this fashionable spa town. Founded by the Romans as a thermal spa, it developed under George III into an elegant town with fine neoclassical Palladian buildings, which blended harmoniously with the Roman baths. It was in Bath where high society congregated.

Simon Fieldhouse “Royal Academy of Arts, London”, 19th century

Gainsborough exhibited many portraits and landscapes in the first 7 years of the existence of the newly-established Royal Academy.

St. Anne’s Church, Kew, Surrey UK

Thomas Gainsborough died of cancer on August 2, 1788 at the age of 61 and was interred at St. Anne’s Church, Kew, Surrey (located on Kew Green), as it was the painter’s explicit request

Gainsborough statue by Sir Bertram Mackennal, 1913, Sudbury, Suffolk, UK