As one of the most famous portrait and landscape painters of 18th-century Britain, Thomas Gainsborough contrasted with Reynolds in his easy-going, laid-back attitude. His light and rapid brushstrokes and delicate colors made him the favorite painter of the royal family and his approach made him influential with future landscape painters.
Thomas Gainsborough was born in Suffolk, eastern England, to a weaver in the wool trade and an artistic mother. Around the age of 13, he had impressed his family enough with his drawing skills for them to let him study art in London. He first trained under Hubert Gravelot (1699–1773), a London-based French designer and engraver, and later became associated with William Hogarth. He was also influenced by the painter and illustrator Francis Hayman (1708–76). In about 1752, Gainsborough set up as a portrait painter in Ipswich, Suffolk. Seven years later, he moved with his wife and children to Bath in southwest England, which, as a fashionable spa resort, attracted many clients for his portraits. Combining some of van Dyck’s elegance with his own relaxed style, his work was instantly successful with the city’s wealthy visitors.
In 1768, George III founded the Royal Academy of Arts, intending to raise the professional status of artists by establishing a system of training and exhibitions of quality contemporary works of art. It was also anticipated that the academy would encourage public appreciation and interest in art “of good taste.” Thirty-four founder members were chosen, of which Gainsborough was one. He exhibited at the academy annually until 1784, when he retired after a dispute over the hanging of his works. In 1774 Gainsborough moved to London and continued to develop his own style, painting quickly, with soft colors and fluid marks, inspired, to a degree, by Rubens. He became the royal family’s favorite painter—however, as president of the Royal Academy, George III was obliged to appoint Joshua Reynolds as the king’s principal painter.
In addition to portraits, Gainsborough painted many landscapes. His rural scenes were painted in a manner that was usually reserved for historical or religious subjects and so demonstrated the legitimacy of everyday themes in art. His visions of rural life were intended to please and to provoke reflection. Contemporary debates about the changing agricultural economy—common land was being taken into private ownership and traditional ways of country life were becoming obsolete—made many nostalgic for the past. Gainsborough’s picturesque landscapes were an elegiac lament for a vanishing world.
The feathery brushwork and rich sense of color in his mature work contribute to the enduring popularity of Gainsborough’s portraits. All his sitters are portrayed informally in fashionable contemporary dress. In 1780, he painted portraits of George III and the queen. Further royal commissions followed, even though, in ignoring many of the traditional rules of painting, Gainsborough was classed as a rebel among painters.
Key Works
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews c.1750, NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, UK
The Painter’s Daughters, Margaret and Mary, Chasing Butterfly c.1756, NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, UK
The Blue Boy 1770, HENRY E. HUNTINGTON ART GALLERY, SAN MARINO, CA, US
Mrs. “Perdita” Robinson 1781–2, WALLACE COLLECTION, LONDON, UK
The Mall 1783, THE FRICK COLLECTION, NEW YORK, US
FRAGONARD
1732–1806 • ROCOCO
The Love Letter
c.1769–70 OIL ON CANVAS
83.2 × 67 CM (32¾ × 26 IN)
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, US
A charming, exquisitely dressed young woman is looking coquettishly out of the canvas, while her little dog adds to the impression that we have interrupted her. She has written a love letter to a gentleman and is about to send it. Fragonard’s great compositional skills, free, confident handling and sense of color are apparent.
A prolific French painter and printmaker, whose energetic and playful style embodied the self-indulgence of the late Rococo period, Jean-Honoré Fragonard has been described as the “fragrant essence” of the 18th century. His delicate coloring, exuberant scenes and fluid brushwork encapsulate the attitudes of the pre-Revolutionary French aristocracy and bourgeoisie like no other.
Although born in Grasse, Fragonard moved to Paris with his family when he was five years old. He spent six months training with Chardin and then became apprenticed to Boucher. In 1752 he won the Prix de Rome, even though he was not officially eligible as he was not a student at the Académie. From 1756 to 1761, he lived in Rome, studying past artists and Tiepolo, who was still working. While in Italy, Fragonard produced small paintings for individual collectors living there and he made some careful drawings of the gardens of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, where he stayed with the artist Hubert Robert (1733–1808).
Back in Paris in 1761, Fragonard’s paintings were instantly popular. They blended elements of Italian Baroque painting and 17th-century Dutch landscapes, and in 1765 he became a member of the Académie after painting a mythological scene that was spectacularly received. Nevertheless, he soon abandoned grand history and mythological works and gravitated toward more pleasurable smaller scenes for private collectors, which featured love, happiness, flowing clothes, abundant foliage and soft, spontaneous brushwork. He worked rapidly, barely blending his colors to create a look of artlessness in his pictures. Prolific and inventive, Fragonard’s work constitutes an expansion of the Rococo style. Over the course of his career, he produced more than 550 paintings, plus drawings and etchings.
He decorated rooms for several of Louis XV’s mistresses, among them Madame de Pompadour (who died in 1764) and his last official mistress, Madame du Barry. Fragonard’s masterpiece of the period is the series of large panel paintings commissioned by Madame du Barry for the Château de Louveciennes, in the western suburbs of Paris. These four large canvases, called The Progress of Love, feature lovers in various stages of romantic attachment in luxuriant, dense gardens full of mythological statues, plants and tumbling flowers. Unfortunately, Madame du Barry rejected the panels and Fragonard left for a second trip to Italy in 1773.
After his return to France, Fragonard tried to adapt to the newly popular Neoclassical style, with its less complex compositions and smooth application of paint, but he found it too alien to his approach and stopped painting in 1792. Because Fragonard had helped the young unknown artist, Jacques-Louis David, in turn David helped him after the French Revolution, finding him a job at the Louvre as curator. Fragonard finally fell from favor under Napoleon and died in relative obscurity in 1806.
Key Works
The Lost Wager c.1759, STATE HERMITAGE, ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
The Swing 1767, WALLACE COLLECTION, LONDON, UK
The Loves of the Shepherds: Love Letters 1771–3, THE FRICK COLLECTION, NEW YORK, US
The Reader c.1770–2, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC, US
The Fountain of Love c.1785, WALLACE COLLECTION, LONDON, UK
GOYA
1746–1828 • ROCOCO PERIOD, ROMANTICISM
The Third of May 1808