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.

"The book begins by charting the geography and professional tactics of a career that took Gainsbourgh from London to Suffolk, Bath and eventually back to London. Rosenthal looks at such wide-ranging topics as how artists manipulated the press, the issue of likeness in portraiture, how rivalries between painters were handled in public and private, and the pressures of the public exhibition. The second part of the book explores the manifestations of Gainsborugh's aesthetic in portraiture, landscape painting and paintings of sensibility. Rosenthal concludes with a discussion of the problem of defining a role and proper form for the fine arts at a time of rapid social change and innovation."--BOOK JACKET.

** 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.

Examines the works of the English painter, and discusses his contributions to the art world by analyzing his personal style

The "grand" portrait has long been understood to have played a pivotal part in the self-definition of Georgian society: not only was a likeness presented to a curious public, but social station and financial rank were also advertised, if not flaunted. Leca, curator at the Cincinnati Art Museum, claims that in addition portraiture was the vehicle for "modernist" ideas. He uses as an example the museum's portrait by Thomas Gainsborough titled Ann Ford, the subject of this exhibition catalogue. In a wide-ranging essay, Leca shows how Gainsborough, the most maverick of the period's portraitists, deliberately piqued establishment taste by seeking out and painting "modern women"--courtesans, dancers, and musicians--who mirrored his own edgy persona, and by rendering them in a provocative and "unfinished" style, thus challenging viewers both morally and visually. In a second essay, Ribeiro (emer., Courtauld Institute, London) discusses the decorum surrounding female portraiture and how Gainsborough's picture deviated or violated accepted notions through pose, dress, and countenance. As an authority on period costume, Ribeiro offers an essay that is rich in observations regarding the social nuances of female attire. Ludwig (doctoral candidate, Boston Univ.) offers a survey of the portraiture of British "progressive" women. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. General Readers; Lower-division Undergraduates; Upper-division Undergraduates; Graduate Students; Researchers/Faculty. Reviewed by L. R. Matteson.

When Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) arrived in the spa town of Bath, England, at the age of thirty-one, he was an artist of modest reputation. When he left sixteen years later, he was recognized as one of Europe's foremost painters. In this exceptional book, Susan Sloman examines for the first time how this transformation took place. She offers an entirely new view of Gainsborough's development during his middle years as well as abundant new information about Bath and its role, for a few decades in the eighteenth century, as a cultural center of Europe. Drawing on freshly discovered documents and a variety of little-known contemporary published sources, Sloman illuminates artistic activity in Bath and Gainsborough's part in it. She reveals how Gainsborough's prominence as an artist and Bath's as a cultural hub were intimately connected during a period in which the artist and his town flourished together.