"When Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines opened The East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, Essex, in 1937 they were both established artists with international reputations...Their idea was to set up an art school which would provide an alternative to the formal courses offered by the art schools in the metropolis. The aim, as expressed in the school's brochure, was to provide 'an environment where students can work together with more experienced artists in a common endeavour to produce sincere painting.' The emphasis was on encouraging freedom of invention, enthusiasm, and enjoyment, with the assumption that the student 'believes himself to have a clear idea of creative work and requires help only in its production'...The extracts which form the text of this book are based largely on conversations with our contributors which took place during the years 1998 and 1999. Articles, extracts from an autobiography and a diary are also included. They comprise the affectionate memories of a few of those who knew and loved Benton End and its two gifted and hospitable hosts." -- from the Introduction.

Thomas Gainsborough's (1727-88) London years, from 1774 to 1788, were the pinnacle and conclusion of his career. They coincided with the establishment of the Royal Academy, of which Gainsborough was a founding member, and the city's ascendance as a center for the arts. This is a meticulously researched and readable account of how Gainsborough designed his home and studio and maintained a growing schedule of influential patrons, making a place for himself in the art world of late-18th-century London. New material about Gainsborough's technique is based on examinations of his pictures and firsthand accounts by studio visitors. His fractious relationship with the Royal Academy and its exhibition culture is reexamined through the works he sent to its annual shows. The full range of Gainsborough's art, from fashionable portraits to landscapes and fancy pictures, is addressed in this major contribution, not just to the study of a great artist, but to 18th-century studies in general.

Despite this famous protestation in a letter to his friend William Jackson, Gainsborough was clearly prepared to make an exception when it came to making portraits of his own family and himself. This book, and the major exhibition it accompanies, features a dozen portraits of his daughters Mary and Margaret, the same number of himself and his wife Margaret (though, perhaps tellingly, only one of the couple together), as well as works depicting four of his five siblings, his handsome nephew Gainsborough Dupont (who became his studio assistant) , an aunt and uncle, several in - laws and _ last, but not least _ his beloved dogs, Tristram and Fox. Spanning more than four decades, Gainsborough_s family portraits chart the period from the mid - 1740s, when he plied his trade in his native Suffolk , through his time in Bath ( 1758 _ 74 ), when he established hi mself with a rich and fashionable clientele , to his most successful latter years at his luxuriously appointed studio in London_s We st End. Alongside this story of a provincial 18th - century artist_s rise to fame and fortune runs a more private narrative, ab out the role of portraiture in the promotion of family values, at a time when these were assuming a recogni s ably modern form. In the first of three introductory essays, David H. Solkin writes on Gainsborough himself, placing his family portraits in the context of earlier practice _ including that of the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and British portraitists from Mary Beale to Joseph Highmore . Ann Bermingham explores Gainsborough_s portraits of his daughters, with particular reference to two finished double portraits painted seven years apart and the tragic story arising from them. Susan Sloman discusses Margaret_s role as her husband_s business manager, its effect on the family dynamic and hence the visual representation of its members.

** Selected as a Book of the Year in The Times, Sunday Times and Observer ** 'Compulsively readable - the pages seem to turn themselves' John Carey, Sunday Times 'Brings one of the very greatest [artists] vividly to life' Literary Review Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) lived as if electricity shot through his sinews and crackled at his finger ends. He was a gentle and empathetic family man, but had a shockingly loose, libidinous manner and a volatility that could lead him to slash his paintings. James Hamilton reveals the artist in his many contexts: the talented Suffolk lad, transported to the heights of fashion; the rake-on-the-make in London, learning his craft in the shadow of Hogarth; the society-portrait painter in Bath and London who earned huge sums by charming the right people into his studio. With fresh insights into original sources, Gainsborough: A Portrait transforms our understanding of this fascinating man, and enlightens the century that bore him.

Based on new research this fascinating book draws together a group of works from public and private collections to examine, for the first time, the relationship that Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) had with the theatrical world and the most celebrated stage artists of his day, such as James Quin, David Garrick and Sarah Siddons. Gainsborough painted notable portraits of these and twenty others, including dramatists, dancers and composers. This publication firmly establishes the artist's place within the theatrical worlds of Bath and London and shows why the art of ballet, and in particular Gainsborough's sitters, rose to prominence in 1780 and examines parallels between Gainsborough's much admired painterly naturalism and the theatrical naturalism of Garrick and Siddons with whom he had personal friendships.