Description
Although he was one of the most celebrated society portraitists of his day, landscape painting was Thomas Gainsborough’s love and lifelong pleasure. Here, delicate layers of watercolor, ink, oil paint, and chalk result in a jewel-like work on paper. The composition combines the rural scene of a herdsman and three cows with an imagined, majestic mountain view, mingling the pastoral with the sublime. The sheet was among a group of 14 landscape drawings that Gainsborough selected as a gift for a close friend.
Provenance
Goodenough Earle, Barton Grange, Somerset, England (?-?); Francis Miller Newton, by descent to Josepha Sophia Newton (?-1794); Josepha Sophia Newton (1848-?); Francis Wheat Newton (?-1913); (Agnew's, London) (1913-1914); (M. Knoedler & Co., New York, NY) (1914); George D. Widener [1889-1971], Philadelphia (?-?); Private collection, by descent to private collection, United States (?-?); Private collection, United States (?-1989); David Lee, UK, by descent to private collection (after 1989-2005); Private collection (2005); (Lowell Libson, London, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH) (2005-2006); Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (2006-)
Accession Number
2006.156
Medium
watercolor, ink and oil paint heightened with white chalk ("Bristol lead white")
Dimensions
Sheet: 21.9 x 31.3 cm (8 5/8 x 12 5/16 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Credit Line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
