Landscape with Trees and a Field, a Church Tower in the Distance
Hayes, John T. “British Patrons and Landscape Painting 2: Eighteenth-Century Collecting.” Apollo 83, no. 49 (March 1966): 190–95.
Hayes, John T. The Landscape Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough: A Critical Text and Catalogue Raisonné. Vols. 1 and 2. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Hayes, John, and Lindsay Stainton. Gainsborough Drawings. Washington, DC: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1983.
Waterhouse, Ellis Kirkham. Gainsborough. London: Spring Books, 1966.
Woodall, Mary. “A Note on Gainsborough and Ruisdael.” Burlington Magazine 66, no. 383 (January 1935).
ProvenanceThe Reverend John Eagles (1783–1855), 1824; H. de C. Harston, Fermain, Guernsey, Channel Islands; [Christie’s, London, Anonymous sale (“The Property of a Gentleman”), April 24, 1987, lot 44]; [purchased by [Richard L. Feigen, New York (1930–2021), 1987–2021]; estate of Richard L. Feigen, 2021; [Sotheby’s, New York, Collector, Dealer, Connoisseur: The Vision of Richard L. Feigen, October 18, 2021, lot 32]; purchased by MFAH, 2021.Thomas Gainsborough was given permission by his parents (his mother being an amateur artist and his father a wool weaver) to leave his home in Sudbury, Suffolk, in 1740 at the age of thirteen to study art in London. He was first instructed by the French printmaker and draftsman Hubert François Bourguignon, known as Gravelot (1699–1773), at a drawing academy in St. Martin’s Lane and also was given artistic advice by the British artist Francis Hayman (1708–1776), among others in that circle.1 Gainsborough remained in London for several years, opening his own studio in Hatton Gardens in 1745 and marrying his wife, Margaret Burr, in 1746.
It was reported that Gainsborough’s “first efforts were small landscapes, which he frequently sold to the dealers at trifling prices.”2 This intimate oil study is from his early London studio years, before he returned to his native Suffolk in 1748 or 1749, upon the death of his father on October 29, 1748. It provides a glimpse of the young master’s artistic gift at the commencement of his long, productive career—a career that would be much admired by future artists, such as the famed artist John Constable, born nearly fifty years after Gainsborough, who, with deep admiration of his landscapes, commented, “I fancy I see Gainsborough in every hedge and hollow tree.”3
This oil sketch portrays a cloudy sky over a forested thicket of trees and bushes, absent of humans and animals. The scene opens up on the left, revealing a path alongside a stream, undulating fields, and a church in the distance. Against a blue sky, the arrangement of the clouds echoes the silhouette of the trees.4 During this period, Dutch seventeenth-century landscapists, such as Jan Wijnants, Meindert Hobbema, Anthonie Waterloo, and Jacob van Ruisdael, were popular with British collectors and influenced Gainsborough’s early landscapes.5 Gainsborough is known for even copying the Dutch naturalists, as seen in a drawn copy after Van Ruisdael called A Wooded Landscape with a River, Cattle, and Figures in the Whitworth Art Gallery (fig. 7.1).6 As John T. Hayes has pointed out, Gainsborough’s early landscapes find parallels to Van Ruisdael’s in several ways. They both map out the composition, alternate light and dark planes in spatial progression, rhythmically outline the leaves of trees both close-up and distant, crisply delineate the tree branches and trunks, light the composition from the side, and employ chiaroscuro for the clouds; many of these effects can be seen in this oil study.7 This painting is datable to 1746–47 and is similar to other small oil paintings that Gainsborough made at this time, such as Landscape with Figures under a Tree and Landscape with a Peasant on a Path, both in Tate, London (figs. 7.2 and 7.3).8
This painting appeared at auction in 1987 and before then was known only through an engraving in reverse by the landscape painter and engraver Frederick Christian Lewis (1779–1856), published on March 1, 1824 (fig. 7.4). It was then in the collection of Reverend John Eagles, who was a keen amateur artist and a curate at St. Nicholas Church in Bristol from 1812 to 1822.9 —Dena M. Woodall
Notes
1. See John T. Hayes, The Landscape Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough: A Critical Text and Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 30–32.2. See Morning Chronicle (London), August 8, 1788.
3. See Susan Owens, “Formative Views,” Apollo 197, no. 715 (January 3, 2023): 78–85.
4. Though somewhat larger but made around the same date, Gainsborough’s painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, has this same characteristic and coloring of the trees and clouds. See Thomas Gainsborough, Landscape with a Pool, c. 1746–47, oil on canvas, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge [PD.3-1966].
5. See John T. Hayes, “British Patrons and Landscape Painting 2: Eighteenth-Century Collecting,” Apollo 83, no. 49 (March 1966): 190–95.
6. Thomas Gainsborough, A Wooded Landscape with a River, Cattle and Figures, after Jacob van Ruisdael, 1746–47, black and white chalk on buff paper, gift of Arthur Edward Anderson, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester [D.1935.2]. It is after Jacob van Ruisdael, La Forêt, oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris [INV 1817; MR 1008; D.1955.2.1] (on loan to the Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai). See Mary Woodall, “A Note on Gainsborough and Ruisdael,” Burlington Magazine 66, no. 383 (January 1935): 40–41, 45, and John Hayes and Lindsay Stainton, Gainsborough Drawings (Washington, DC: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1983), 36–37, cat. 6, illus.
7. See Hayes, The Landscape Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough, 1:45.
8. Thomas Gainsborough, Landscape with Figures under a Tree, c. 1746–47, oil on canvas, Tate, presented by the family of Richard J. Lane 1896 [NO1486]; Landscape with a Peasant on a Path, c. 1746–47, oil on canvas, Tate, London, presented by the family of Richard J. Lane 1896 [NO1485]. It can also be put in context with a painting he made a year later: Thomas Gainsborough, Cornaro Wood, near Sudbury, Suffolk, 1748, oil on canvas, the National Gallery, London, bought (Lewis Fund), 1875 [NG925].
9. Eagles was also a critic of Blackwood’s Magazine. See William T. Whitley, Art in England (1821–1837) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 300. See Frederick Christian Lewis, after Thomas Gainsborough, published by Taylor & Hessy and John & Arthur Arch, London, Landscape with Trees and a Field, 1824, etching and aquatint, printed chine collé, on paper, proof, British Museum, London [1850, 1014.709]. An inscription lettered below the image features the painter’s name in open letters with the production detail “Engraved (from the original picture in the possession of Revd. J. Eagles) by F. C. Lewis” and the publication line “Published by Taylor & Heesy, 13 Waterloo Place & 93 Fleet Street, and J & A Arch, Cornhill, for F. C. Lewis, Paddington, March 1. 1824.”
Comparative Images
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