- 128
Thomas Gainsborough R.A.
Description
- Thomas Gainsborough R.A.
- A Country House, with figures coming down a stairway recto; a study of a house verso
- pen and grey ink with grey wash heightened with white recto, pen and grey ink with grey wash verso, on laid paper watermarked with a Strasburg lily and GR
- 25.5 by 36.4 cm.; 10 1/4 by 14 1/2 in.
Provenance
Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 4 March 1975, lot 16
Catalogue Note
This drawing dates from the early 1780s and belongs to a small group of drawings which show a country house combining classical design with rustic tiled roof additions. These architectural features also include figures, and the two which relate most closely to this are at Castle Howard, Yorkshire (see John Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, 1970, no. 518) and in the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester (see Hayes, no. 519). All three are within a few millimetres in size of each other. Another, untraced, is no. 520 in Hayes. Hugh Belsey points out that the present work is alone in that it includes white chalk additions adding figures, chimneys, an urn and some foliage for which there is no obvious precedent among the others of this group of drawings which include architecture. The Whitworth drawing does incorporate both white and black chalk but not to the same degree as here.
Dr Hayes notes that Gainsborough used the motif of a country mansion with figures descending a stairway in a large oil painting entitled A lodge in a Park, with Children Descending Steps. The same compositional device also appears in Charity Relieving Distress (see Ellis Waterhouse, Gainsborough, 1958, cat. no. 991 and cat. no. 998, pl. 229).
We would like to thank Hugh Belsey for his help with cataloguing this lot.