Thomas Gainsborough, R.A.

Probably William Cavendish, 7^th Duke of Devonshire (1808-1891),

by family descent to the Hon. Richard Cavendish (1917-1972), by 1970,

by family descent until,

sale, ‘The Trustees of the Holker Estates’, London, Christie’s, 8 November 1994, lot 11, bt Leger,

with Leger Galleries, London,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

New York, The Morgan Library & Museum and Washington, National Gallery of Art, Private Treasures: Four Centuries of European Master Drawings, 2007, no. 70 (entry by Jennifer Tonkovich);

Northampton, Massachusetts, Smith College Museum of Art; Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Drawn to Excellence: Renaissance to Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection, 2012-2013, no. 76

J. Hayes, ‘Notes on British Art: The Holker Gainsboroughs’, Apollo, LXXX, June 1964, Supplement, pp. 2-3;

J. Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, London 1970, pp. 84, 248-9, no. 606, pl. 192

This bold drawing, with its free-flowing lines and dramatic white chalk, dates to the mid-1780s, a period when Gainsborough - then living in London - seems to have relished creating pure landscapes which are full of movement and atmosphere.

The act of drawing had always been important to Gainsborough and although he seems never to have attempted to sell his works on paper, preferring instead to either keep them for himself or, on occasion, give them to close friends or favored clients, it is clear that these works were much admired by those who knew them. His friend, William Jackson (d. 1803), for example, went as far as to declare that 'if I were to rest his [Gainsborough’s] reputation upon one point, it should be on his drawings. No man ever possessed methods so various in producing effect, and all were excellent.'¹

The present lot is one of five late Gainsborough landscape drawings that are believed to have been acquired by Lord William Cavendish, later 7^th Duke of Devonshire, in the 1830s and that he transferred to his Cumbrian seat, Holker Hall in the early 1870s.² These drawings remained at Holker until 1994, when four out of five (including the present sheet), were sold.

^1.J. Hayes and L. Stainton, Gainsborough Drawings, Washington 1983, p. 15

^2.Hayes, op. cit, 1970, pp. 247, 248, 253 & 255, nos. 598, 606, 627, 635 & 636