Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.
17 Facts About Thomas Gainsborough
2.
Thomas Gainsborough painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes.
3.
Thomas Gainsborough is credited as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school.
4.
Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woollen goods, and his wife Mary, the sister of the Reverend Humphry Burroughs.
5.
Thomas Gainsborough later resided there, following the death of his father in 1748 and before his move to Ipswich.
6.
Thomas Gainsborough was allowed to leave home in 1740 to study art in London, where he trained under engraver Hubert Gravelot but became associated with William Hogarth and his school.
7.
Thomas Gainsborough assisted Francis Hayman in the decoration of the supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, and contributed one image to the decoration of what is the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children.
8.
Thomas Gainsborough was so keen a viol da gamba player that he had at this stage five of the instruments, three made by Henry Jaye and two by Barak Norman.
9.
About this time, Thomas Gainsborough began experimenting with printmaking using the then-novel techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching.
10.
In 1776, Thomas Gainsborough painted a portrait of Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach.
11.
Thomas Gainsborough did not particularly enjoy reading but letters written to his friends were penned in such an exceptional conversational manner that the style could not be equalled.
12.
Thomas Gainsborough is interred in the churchyard St Anne's Church, Kew, Surrey,.
13.
Later his wife and nephew Thomas Gainsborough Dupont were interred with him.
14.
Thomas Gainsborough was noted for the speed with which he applied paint, and he worked more from observations of nature than from application of formal academic rules.
15.
Thomas Gainsborough's landscapes were often painted at night by candlelight, using a tabletop arrangement of stones, pieces of mirrors, broccoli, and the like as a model.
16.
Thomas Gainsborough's works became popular with collectors from the 1850s on, after Lionel de Rothschild began buying his portraits.
17.
Thomas Gainsborough was a matrilineal descendant of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York.