Thomas Gainsborough R.A. 1727 - 1788

Grigby family, Drinkstone Park, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk;
John Harcourt Powell who married the daughter of Joshua Grigby, M.P.;
by descent at Drinkstone Park until 1991;
Anonymous sale, Sotheby's London, 9 June 1998, lot 3

STRUCTURE The canvas has been lined. PAINT SURFACE The paint surface is in very good clean condition. There is a light and even cracquelure characteristic of age. ULTRAVIOLET Ultraviolet light reveals some light scattered re-touching along the left hand edge of the canvas. There is a small, slightly more pronounced area of re-touching to the foliage lower right, and a very small area of re-touching upper left. Overall under UV the painting appears to be in very good condition. FRAME Held in a carved and gilded period Chippendale style frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"I feel such a fondness for my first imitations of little Dutch Lanskips that I can't keep from working an hour or two a day."  So wrote Gainsborough on 22nd May 1788 to his friend Thomas Harvey of Catton Hall, owner of one of the artist's most famous pictures, The Cottage Door.  This atmospheric landscape, which used to hang at Drinkstone Park in Suffolk, dates from c.1746-1748 and is a fine example of these early works.  It shows the artist's ability to combine his own feeling for the landscape of his native Suffolk with an understanding of landscape composition as practised by Dutch artists like Ruisdael. 

Gainsborough was a natural painter who showed from his very first works an uncommon sensitivity both to detail and to natural effects.  When his parents sent him to London to study aged thirteen, one of the most lasting influences on his style was Dutch landscape painting of the seventeenth century.  Dutch landscapes by artists such as Waterloo, Ruisdael, Wijnants and Hobbema appeared in profusion in sales in London in the 1740s and provided for Gainsborough a pictorial framework which had been lacking in his earliest work.  On 7th August 1788 the obituarist in the Morning Chronicle noted that: "the first master he studied was Wijnants... The next was Ruysdael..," and it is interesting that the only surviving example of an actual copy of a Dutch landscape by Gainsborough is a chalk drawing of Ruisdael's La Foret (Whitworth Art Gallery - original painting owned by the Louvre, Paris).  The recurring motifs of the winding track, the low horizon and the dramatic use of clouds which appear in so many early Gainsborough landscapes are, as John Hayes points out, a synthesis of elements drawn both from Ruisdael and Wijnants. 

The Drinkstone Landscape draws on three compositions by Ruisdael, Wheatfields (Metropolitan Museum, New York), Greenfields (Freidsam Collection) and Landscape with figures (Beit Collection), all of which may well have been available to the young Gainsborough in the 1740s.  In particular it owes many of its most successful elements to the example of Ruisdael.  The winding path draws the spectator throughout the landscape into the distance, the alternating areas of dark and light help, to create a feeling of space and the atmospheric clouds in the sky echo the landscape's silhouette.  It also relates closely to another early landscape by Gainsborough, Landscape with Chalky Banks (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), formerly owned by J.H. Reynolds, which is the identical size and is also dated 1746-7.  Characteristically Gainborough has also retained a feeling for his native Suffolk, particularly  in the cornfield in the foreground, which is reminiscent of the background to Mr and Mrs Andrews (National Gallery) painted in c.1748.  A deft touch of naturalism is introduced in the cornfield with the irregular line caused by the presence in it of an animal, probably a dog. 

The picture descended in the Grigby family since the eighteenth century and was either directly commissioned or bought by the owner of Drinkstone Park (described as "lately erected" by the Suffolk Traveller of 1764), either Joshua Grigby Senior, a solicitor in Bury St. Edmunds of his son Joshua.  Joshua Grigby Junior (1731-1798) was M.P. for Suffolk 1784-1790 and bencher and treasurer of Gray's Inn.  He was painted by Gainsborough in c.1765.  The Grigby family also owned another early landscape by Gainsborough , Wooded Landscape with Peasant sleeping beside a Winding Track and Herdsmen with Cattle drinking at a Pool (Sao Paolo Museum of Art), the composition for which is closely based on Ruisdael's Le Foret.