BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.- On view June 15 through September 14, 2003 in the Gund Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788 celebrates one of Britain’s greatest artists in the most comprehensive exhibition of Gainsborough’s work in over a century. Drawing from fifty private and public collections, this sumptuous survey will feature more than ninety paintings and drawings, ranging from his intimate family renderings, to his sophisticated portraits of English gentry, to his innovative landscape paintings. Of the nineteen of Gainsborough’s most famous full-length portraits included in the exhibition, fifteen will be gathered together in a magnificent central gallery — which for the duration of the exhibition will constitute the greatest room of British portraiture in America. The MFA installation will further bring Gainsborough’s world to life by including eighteenth-century furniture, as well as musical instruments and costumes drawn from the Museum’s encyclopedic collection.

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788 is organized by Tate Britain in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The media sponsor is WBZ-TV 4. “As heir to Van Dyck and predecessor of Sargent, an exceptional landscape painter, virtuoso of the portrait, and founding member of London’s Royal Academy, Thomas Gainsborough well deserves his reputation as one of the greatest of 18th-century artists,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director, MFA. “We are thrilled to provide MFA visitors with the opportunity to fully experience his exceptional artistry and to present this extraordinarily beautiful exhibition.”

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788, curated at the MFA by Frederick Ilchman, Assistant Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, in cooperation with George Shackelford, Chair, Art of Europe, traces the remarkable evolution of style, technique and genre that occurred over the artist’s extensive career. Born in the small town of Sudbury, England, Thomas Gainsborough trained in London and developed his craft briefly back in Sudbury and then in the thriving port town of Ipswich, before making the crucial decision to establish himself in the spa town of Bath. There his talents as a gifted portrait painter, renowned for his ability to capture his sitter’s likeness, brought him a wealthy and appreciative clientele. He later became a founding member of the Royal Academy, and settled in London in 1774. From his earliest portraits and landscapes, through his great success in Georgian society, to his experimental late works, this exhibition investigates all areas of Gainsborough’s art, confirming his rank as one of the greatest European portraitists, and presenting the full scope of his artistic achievement. Interspersed with period furniture, musical instruments and costumes, Thomas Gainsborough 1727 –1788 is designed to enhance MFA visitors’ ability to appreciate the artist and his era. “Thomas Gainsborough is as intriguing an artist as his paintings are visually spectacular,” said Frederick Ilchman, exhibition curator. “Visitors will witness his remarkable growth as an artist, be drawn into intimate pictures of his family and friends, and stand surrounded by his legendary portraits of the most notorious and noteworthy personalities of his era — as well as discover a wealth of similarities to Boston’s historic heyday. This is a remarkable opportunity to be swept away into the art, life and world of Thomas Gainsborough.”

An intimate entry space welcomes visitors into the era of Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788. Two of his self-portraits are displayed here, the first of which was painted when the artist was only twelve or thirteen (about 1739 – 40) in which Gainsborough heralds his early ambitions, depicting himself with confident gaze directed at the viewer, holding a painter’s palette and brush. The second (about 1758 – 59) is featured within a period display which evokes a mideighteenth century English interior, furnished with objects drawn from the Museum’s collection of European Decorative Arts — including a splendid English chandelier recently acquired by the MFA.

Early Years: Sudbury and Ipswich

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788 records the artist’s burgeoning career in Sudbury and Ipswich, where he found opportunity at a time when portraits were commissioned not only by aristocrats but also by a newly wealthy class of professionals and manufacturers. Gainsborough’s early work is marked by a skillful practice of the “conversation piece” — a small group portrait with figures shown full-length, often in a landscape setting — a form going out of style in London, but still popular in the provinces. A number of examples in this mode are displayed together, ranging from the melancholy Portrait of the Artist with his Wife and Daughter (about 1748), which may have been created as a posthumous tribute to the couple’s child who died in infancy, to the deftly composed The Gravenor Family (about 1752 –54), which illustrates the artist’s growing technical acumen, as well as his keen ability to capture the individuality of his sitters.

With growing confidence, by the end of his years in Ipswich Gainsborough was depicting his subjects on a larger scale and in increasingly animated poses, as evidenced by his half-length portraits of William Wollaston (about 1759) and Uvedale Tomkyns Price (about 1760 – 61). Marked with the freshness and naturalism that pervade the artist’s work, these portraits also reveal the predilections Gainsborough shared with his sitters: Wollaston, like Gainsborough an avid amateur musician, is shown holding a flute and balancing music on his thigh, while Price, also an artist and musician, is surrounded by drawing implements. Gainsborough also explored landscape at this time. Works here include the celebrated Gainsborough’s Forest (‘Cornard Wood’) (about 1746 – 48), which captures a familiar vista near the artist’s birthplace, along with Hollywells Park, Ipswich (about 1748 – 50), two of the few landscapes which depict specific topography rather than inventions of the artist’s imagination. An early example of his preferred method of thoughtfully devising, rather than merely mirroring, landscape is the more generalized Landscape with a view of a Distant Village (about 1750). Many of Gainsborough’s early landscapes, in their stormy mood and minute detail, reflect the influence of Jacob van Ruisdael and other seventeenth-century Dutch painters, whose work was acquired in large numbers by English collectors in the 1740s. Here the exhibition also features a large black and white chalk copy after Ruisdael’s La Forêt. Created about 1747, the impressive precision in the drawing reveals the extent of Gainsborough’s admiration for the Dutch master’s work.

Drawings

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788 explores the artist’s works on paper within the overall context of his work — created in a wide range of subject matter and media throughout his career. Gainsborough’s development of his hand at rendering objects from nature, as well as the influence of his early training in London, is evident in the early sketches. Occasionally the sketches were made in preparation for paintings. However, despite the more than eight hundred portraits Gainsborough painted, his surviving drawings related to portraits are usually studies for pose or costume, not for the sitter’s facial features. Most of his later drawings (examples of which are displayed in a gallery of landscapes and in a gallery devoted to his late work) are more experimental, personal works, which often incorporate watercolor, ink or washes, sometimes on colored paper.

Later Landscapes

Although renowned for his portraiture, Gainsborough created landscapes in a range of media throughout his career, and in fact considered these works to be a refuge from the demanding business of capturing a client’s likeness. In addition to the early works described above, Thomas Gainsborough 1727 – 1788 includes a gallery devoted to the artist’s mature landscapes. This selection charts the development of Gainsborough’s grand, freely expressive style and the broadening of his artistic influences, as that of Dutch painters in his early works is usurped by that of old master painters such as Claude Lorrain and Peter Paul Rubens, whose works he encountered in the grand country homes of his wealthy patrons. The exhibition features two works, A Grand Landscape (1763) and The Harvest Wagon (about 1767), which Gainsborough chose to represent him in the public exhibitions mounted by the newly founded Society of Artists in London. The ambitious painted landscapes are paralleled by drawings like the extraordinary A Peasant Family Traveling to Market (about 1770 – 74), in which the mundane figures, monumentally rendered, echo a Rembrandt etching of the “Flight into Egypt”. Also included is a portrait of the famous auctioneer James Christie (about 1778) shown leaning on a Gainsborough landscape that he hopes to sell.

Gainsborough at Bath

Gainsborough’s move to Bath in 1759 marked the pivotal turning point in his career. Then he established himself as the preferred portraitist of the wealthy tourists who engulfed the stylish spa as well as ensconced himself in Bath’s artistic circle, whose members he also counted as clients. Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 - 1788 features a large gallery which investigates a number of themes and subjects that came to characterize his work during his years in Bath — including portrayals of musicians and their instruments, ambitious renderings of costumes and fabrics, and unconventional explorations of painting techniques — and displays the portraits that would catalyze Gainsborough’s national reputation as a leading artist of his day.

Highlights include his portrait of audacious singer and musician Ann Ford, Later Mrs. Thicknesse (1760); celebrated composer Carl Friedrich Abel (about 1777); and the unfinished Captain Thomas Mathews (about 1772). Gainsborough’s motifs are reflected in the musical instruments displayed here — including an English guitar, like that cradled by Ann Ford; a bass viola da gamba, Carl Friedrich Abel’s chosen instrument; and a flute similar to that which William Wollaston wields — as well as examples of elegant period dress, which confirm by comparison Gainsborough’s mastery at conveying the garb of his sitters.

Full Length Portraiture and the Annual Exhibitions

Gainsborough’s career as a portraitist flourished during the time at which annual art exhibitions took root, art criticism was born, and commissions of full-length portraits were rewarded handsomely. Gainsborough was celebrated during this era for his distinctive brushwork and use of exquisite detail, as well as his unequaled ability to evoke the likenesses of his storied sitters. Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788 showcases 15 of these prized full-length portraits, most of which were first exhibited in London at the Society of Artists, founded in 1760, and the Royal Academy of Arts, established in 1768, with Thomas Gainsborough as a founding member. These annual exhibitions drew much desired attention to professional artists and their works, and Gainsborough tried to orchestrate the display of his works in them – an issue which generated friction between himself and his longtime rival, artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, the president of the Royal Academy. Key works selected for this centerpiece gallery include: The Linley Sisters (1772) in which the artist places the girls in a dreamy woodland setting; Grace Dalrymple, Mrs. John Elliott (1778) a dramatic rendering of a glamorous courtesan, replete with lavish gown and up-swept mane; Reverend Henry Bate (1780) depicting one of the artist’s staunchest supporters, a man of keen confidence and erudition; the pair of pendant portraits of Edward, Second Viscount Ligonier, and Penelope, Viscountess Ligonier (1771), which first hung together at the Royal Academy, ironically while the couple was in the midst of separating; and An Officer of the 4th Regiment of Foot (about 1776–80), which depicts a member of the regiment deployed to New England to quell the rebellion of the American colonists. Landing in Boston in the spring of 1774, this solider would have taken part in the battles of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill, in 1775.

Gainsborough and Van Dyck

The exhibition also explores the chain of artistic emulation and influence between generations of European portrait painting. Traced in particular is the crucial impact Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck (1599 – 1641) had on later portraitists, particularly Gainsborough. Van Dyck’s ability to endow his sitters with an air of nobility and nonchalance set a standard that Gainsborough strove to attain, as seen in his Lords John and Bernard Stuart (about 1760 – 70), a Gainsborough copy after Van Dyck’s painting of about 1638. Gainsborough also employed the dress and pose of Van Dyck’s subjects — which were extremely in vogue at the time — in his own portraits, as he did in Isabella, Viscountess Molyneux (about 1769), displayed here, and most famously in Jonathan Buttall: The Blue Boy (1770). Continuing the thread of reverential emulation, this revealing vignette will also include a fascinating copy after The Blue Boy attributed to British artist John Hoppner (1758 – 1810), who owned the celebrated original for nearly a decade.

Gainsborough and his Social Circle

Gainsborough also used his family and close friends for his more experimental portraits. Featured works include the haunting Portrait of the Artist’s Daughters (about 1763 – 64) which alludes to Gainsborough’s ambitions for the two girls; the intense Mrs. Thomas Gainsborough, Formerly Margaret Burr (about 1778) which registers the artist’s admiration and affection for his wife, with whom he shared an uneven union; as well as Tristram and Fox (about 1770) which depicts the couple’s beloved dogs. Also included in this gallery is Gainsborough Dupont (about 1772), which depicts the artist’s nephew and only apprentice as a young lord in the style of Van Dyck; as well as a portrait of the artist’s brother The Reverend Humphrey Gainsborough (about 1770 – 74).

Late Works

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788 culminates with a magisterial selection of works created during the years following Gainsborough’s move to London in 1774 and the cementing of his rank as one of the most important artists in Britain and the favorite portraitist of the royal family. During these later years, Gainsborough liberally explored painterly styles and techniques, and developed new genres of subject matter. Highlights of this gallery include portraits of the family of King George III, The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland, Attended by Lady Elizabeth Luttrell (about 1783 – 85), lent to the exhibition by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Edward Augustus, Later Duke of Kent (about 1787); as well as Mrs. Siddons (about 1785), a fashionable depiction of one of the most famous actresses of her day; and the glorious Mr. and Mrs. William Hallett (‘The Morning Walk’)(1785) — which had never traveled to the United States prior to this exhibition. “The Morning Walk” presents a leisurely stroll depicted in the loose and feathery brushstroke that came to characterize Gainsborough’s later portraits, in contrast to the tautness of earlier works. Atmospheric late landscapes are also highlighted here, such as Romantic Landscape with Sheep at Spring (about 1783), Mountain Landscape with Bridge (about 1783 – 84) and Rocky Landscape with Hagar and Ishmael (about 1785) — the artist’s only explicitly religious work — which are all divinations of the artist’s imagination. At this point in his career, Gainsborough is also noted for broadening his subject matter into a new genre known as “fancy pictures” — imaginary and sentimental scenes of rural life painted on the monumental scale of full-length portraits. Highlights from this category include Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher (1785), Shepherd Boys with Dogs Fighting (about 1783), and the MFA’s masterpiece Haymaker and Sleeping Girl (late 1780s) displayed with a preparatory drawing on loan from the British Museum. Gainsborough’s highly experimental painting, and only mythological narrative, Diana and Actaeon, (about 1784 –86) is also featured here, along with a related study. Other late drawings are also displayed in this gallery, including magnificent studies (about 1783-85) for a never-completed painting to be titled The Richmond Water-Walk, which was probably intended for the King of England. The exhibition closes with a late Self-Portrait (about 1787), the style and quality of which makes clear the arc of a remarkable career.

The MFA and Antenna Audio have created an audio tour, narrated by Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA, and featuring interviews with exhibition curator Frederick Ilchman; Darcy Kuronen, curator, Musical Instruments, MFA; and Pam Parmal, curator, Textile and Fashion Arts, MFA; as well as music of the period. The Antenna Audio tour for Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788 is available for $5 and can be purchased when buying tickets for the exhibition. Visitors can retain their audio guides to experience Director’s Choice, a guide to more than 60 major works of art in the MFA’s permanent collection, ranging from the ceiling murals by John Singer Sargent to a 4,500-year-old sculpture of a royal Egyptian couple, as well as beloved MFA paintings such as Don Baltasar Carlos with a Dwarf (1632) by Diego Velázquez.

Exhibition Tour

Before opening at the MFA on June 15, 2003, Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788 was on view at Tate Britain in London from October 2002 through January 2003, and at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. from February through May 2003.

To accompany the exhibition, Tate Britain has produced a catalogue featuring full-color images of many of the works included in Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788.

A number of educational programs, including curatorial talks, lectures and a concert have been planned in conjunction with Thomas Gainsborough, 1727 – 1788.

Lectures

MFA Director Malcolm Rogers and exhibition curator Frederick Ilchman will delve into intimate aspects the extraordinary career of this legendary British artist in a series of special lectures  presented at the MFA this June.