A Fine Line: Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries

Thomas Gainsborough, R.A.

Wooded upland landscape with shepherd and sheep

Auction Closed

July 7, 10:53 AM GMT

Estimate

15,000 - 20,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Thomas Gainsborough, R.A.

Sudbury 1727-1788 London

Wooded upland landscape with shepherd and sheep

Black and white chalk and stumping on blue paper

245 by 343 mm

With The Fine Art Society, London, by the 1960s;
where acquired by the father of the present owner

This drawing can be dated on stylistic grounds to circa 1784, a year after the artist's sojourn in the Lake District. Although many of Gainsborough's earlier drawings respond to real places, the landscape drawings he executed in his final decade are often capricci, and witness him exploring the themes of the picturesque.

There is another version of this composition in the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, Winchester, Virginia.¹

1. J. Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, London 1970, no. 604