1727-1788 British Thomas Gainsborough Locations English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name. He went on to consider Gainsborough portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth. His portraits, landscapes and subject pictures are only now coming to be studied in all their complexity; having previously been viewed as being isolated from the social, philosophical and ideological currents of their time, they have yet to be fully related to them. It is clear, however, that his landscapes and rural pieces, and some of his portraits, were as significant as Reynolds acknowledged them to be in 1788.  Related Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough :. | The Lady-s Last Stake | John Campbell | An Unknown Couple in a Landscape | Robert Andrews and his Wife Frances (mk08) | Seashore with Fishermen |
Related Artists:
Master of Hoogstraeten
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, active ca.1490-1530
MARIESCHI, Michele
Italian Painter, 1710-1743 Italian painter and engraver. His first biographers, Orlandi and Guarienti (1753), stated that Marieschi worked in Germany early in his career and then returned to Venice, where he established himself as a painter of 'beautiful views of the Grand Canal, and of churches and palaces'. Yet there is no other evidence for this journey and Marieschi's early training remains problematic. It seems likely that he began his career as a stage designer: his first recorded activity, in 1731, was the preparation, on behalf of the impresario Francesco Tasso ( fl 1725-c. 1740), of the setting for the Venetian celebration of Carnival Thursday in the Piazzetta. He then, influenced by Marco Ricci and Luca Carlevaris, began to paint capriccios and vedute. His early capriccios, such as the pair Capriccio with Classical Ruins and Bridge and Capriccio with Roman Arch and Encampment (mid-1730s; Naples, Mus. Civ. Gaetano Filangieri), are indebted to Ricci, although they lack his solemnity and magnificence. Marieschi's blend of medieval and Classical ruins in a serene Venetian landscape is more picturesque and romantic. Marieschi began to paint vedute having been encouraged by Canaletto's great success with the genre; examples such as the S Maria della Salute (1733-5; Paris, Louvre), the Piazzetta dei Leoni and the Grand Canal at Ca' Pesaro (1734-5; both Munich, Alte Pin.) are distinguished from Canaletto's work by their exaggerated perspective, more atmospheric colour and the spirited handling of the small figures. Two capriccios, the Town on a River with Rapids (London, N.G.) and the Town on a River with Shipping (London, N.G.;.), both charmingly picturesque scenes with watermills and crumbling towers, date from the mid-1730s. Marieschi began to etch in the 1730s,
Gerard Ter Borch
1617-1681 Dutch Gerard Ter Borch Locations Gerard Ter Borch was born in Zwolle. His first teacher was his father, Gerard Ter Borch the Elder, who in his youth had spent some years in Rome and returned with drawings he had made as well as some he had collected in Italy. The son precociously revealed his gifts as a draftsman, as shown in his drawing of a man on horseback (1625). Ter Borch traveled widely. In 1634 he was in Haarlem, in 1635 in London, in 1640 probably in Rome. A visit to Spain is reflected in reminiscences of Diego Velazquez in the style and psychological penetration of Ter Borch s portraits. His famous portrait Helena van der Schalke as a Child (ca. 1644) calls to mind Velazquez s Infantas; the placement of the figure in palpable yet undefined space, without the indication of a floor line, is a masterful adoption of the Spanish masters invention. Between 1645 and 1648 Ter Borch was in Munster, Germany, where he went to seek portrait commissions during the meetings that ended the 80 years of war between the United Provinces and Spain. His small group portrait Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Munster is a rare example in Dutch 17th-century painting of the recording of an actual historical event. It includes more than 50 recognizable portraits. The painter asked for this work the enormous price of 6, 000 guilders. Apparently no buyer was found, for the picture was in the hands of his widow after his death. From 1654 on Ter Borch lived mainly in Deventer, where he married, became a citizen, held honorary office, and died on Dec. 8, 1681. Ter Borch s early paintings were mainly scenes of military life, painted with great subtlety of color and values. Later he showed a predilection for small, dainty interior scenes, in which he revealed his delight in the sheen of satin and the grace of charming women. The elegance of his figures has tended to obscure the fact that in many cases they are shown as participants in situations of amatory commerce. The figures and costumes are painted with care and high finish that is not matched in the settings and backgrounds, which are often not well realized. The Music Lesson (ca. 1675) is a characteristic late example of Ter Borchs favorite subject matter. His most able pupil, Caspar Netscher, became a successful portraitist in the small-scale and fashionable tradition of his master.