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5.4) Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)
When Gainsborough made his often-quoted remark about Reynolds, "Damn him, how various he is", he was glancing, we may suppose, at the peculiar skill by which his great rival ran the whole gamut of portrait-painting, from "mere heads" to the most elaborate poetic and allegorical fantasies. Gainsborough himself had no such variety, but painted his sitters, commonly, in their habit as they lived. Yet, in a larger sense, he was far more va-rious than Reynolds. He excelled in two distinct branches of the art, portraiture and landscape, and revealed an un-equalled success in combining the two -- that is, in adjusting the human figure to a background of natural scenery. Moreover, he excelled in conversation pieces, animal painting, seascapes, genre and even still life. Such was his peculiar variety. Gainsborough's personality was also more vivid and various than that of Sir Joshua. He was excitable, easily moved to wrath and as readily appeased, generous and friendly with all who loved music and animals and the open air. He had not Reynolds's gift of suffering fools gladly. Although he painted at court, he was not a courtly person, but preferred to associate with musicians, simple folk, and, on occasion, with cottagers. His most engaging pictures are those of persons with whom he was intimate or at ease. His grand sitters seem a little glacial, for all the perfection of the painter's technique, as though a pane of glass were between them and the artist.
The methods of the two painters are sufficiently indicated by their respective treatment of Mrs Siddons. Reynolds, when the portrait was finished, signed his name along the edge of her robe, in order to send his name "down to posterity on the hem of her garment". Gainsborough made no attempt, as he had no wish, to record the art of "Queen Sarah"; but he was interested in the woman as she rustled into his studio in her blue and white silk dress. Her hat, muff and fur delighted him, and he proceeded to paint her as though she were paying him a call. As an actress, she was one of those sitters with whom he could be informal; and while drawing her striking profile, he is said to have remarked, "Damn it, madam, there is no end to your nose." The man who made such a remark was, clearly, no courtier, but a brusque and friendly being, concerned to rid his sitter of all sense of restraint. For a painter's studio is to the sitter a nerve-racking place.
Gainsborough had from the first shown peculiar skill in representing his sitters as out-of-doors, and thus uniting portraiture with landscape. In his youth he had painted a portrait of Mr and Mrs Andrews sitting in a wheat-fieM - a lovely picture, fresh as the dew of morning, in which Gainsborough's two major interests seem almost equally balanced; and at the close of his career his love of scenery sometimes prevailed over his interest in human beings, and resulted not so much in a portrait as in a picture of a garden or a park, animated by gallant men and gracious women. The tendency to prefer the scenery to the persons animating it reaches a climax in the famous canvas "Ladies Walking in the Mall". It is a view of the central avenue of the Mall, near Gainsborough's residence, behind Carlton House. The identity of the fashionable ladies taking an afternoon stroll in the park is happily ignored. The rustling of the foliage is echoed, as it were, in the shimmer of the ladies' gowns, so that Horace Walpole wrote of the picture that it was "all-a-flutter, like a lady's fan". It has the delicate grace of Lancret or Pater, and betrays the painter's ingenious escape from his studio to the greenest retreat.
Joshua Reynolds
on the Art of Thomas Gainsborough
"Whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes or fancy-pictures, it is difficult to determine [ .] This excel-lence was his own, the result of his particular observation and taste; for this he was certainly not indebted [ .] to any School; for his grace was not academical, or antique, but selected by himself from the great school of nature [ .]
Реферат опубликован: 8/04/2006