Thomas Gainsborough quotes - page 2

When the streets are paved with brilliants and the skies made of rainbows I suppose you'll be contented and satisfied with red, blue and yellow.... how to satisfy your tawdry friends while you steal back into the mild evening gleam and quiet middle term[? ]. I'll tell you, my sprightly genius, how this is to be done. Maintain all your lights, but spare the poor abused colours till the eye rests and recovers. Keep up your music by supplying the place of noise by more sound, more harmony and more tune, and split that cursed fife and drum.... he [Mr. Garrick] must feel the truth of what I am now saying, that neither our plays, paintings or music are any longer real works of invention, but the abuse of Nature's lights and what has been already invented in former times. (Thomas Gainsborough)
I am much obliged to you for your last letter, and the lessons reed, before. I think I now begin to see a little into the nature of modulation and the introduction of flats and sharps ; and when we meet you shall hear me play extempore.. View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
A landscape of uncommon merit has been painted lately by Mr. Gainsborough. It is a picturesque scene, and although limited in extent of country is beautifully romantic. It contains a rustic history that cannot fail to impart delight to every beholder. Three peasant children are introduced; one of them, a young girl, has an infant brother in her arms; the other, a little boy of about six years, appears to have been engaged in the task of collecting the broken branches of trees for fire-wood; he is resting on a bank in conversation with his sister. A pastoral innocence and native sensibility give inexpressible beauty to these charming little objects. They cannot be viewed without the sensations of tenderness and pleasure, and an interest for their humble fate. View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
Gainsborough was never in Italy, and to atone in some measure for the injury which that negligence might prove to him, he was in the habit of borrowing, and sometimes purchasing, works of that school as objects of study. One day, finding him attentively examining the fine picture of Mola that represents 'Jupiter and Leda' from which it was with difficulty he could be parted, we inquired what it was that so particularly caught his attention. 'It is this manner of painting' replied the modest artist 'which I shall never attain, for Mola appears to have made it his own by patent.' View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
..to which and succeeding excursions the public are indebted for the greater part of the sketches and more finished drawings from time to time produced by that whimsical, ingenious, but very deserving artist. Mr. Gainsborough painted during these years several landscapes of extraordinary merit that were mostly executed by candle light, to which he was much accustomed. View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
[painting by artificial light is (as Gainsborough frequently did, according to Sir Joshua) very advantageous and improving to an artist. View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
It is to Gainsborough's credit that he never attempted the so-called 'grand style' in painting as did Romney with such doubtful success; in that province Reynolds holds the highest rank of the artists of his day. Gainsborough in some respects was like a child; and this gives his character a certain attraction. View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was a native of Sudbury, Suffolk; his father was a tailor. Gainsborough, as a child, went to the Sudbury Free School, where he distinguished himself by making ink-drawings on the desks instead of writing his copies. This I had from Mr. Briggs. View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
I have dwelt on his [Gainsborough's] early works, since picture-dealers.. ..always decry them, and say he never painted a picture fit to be seen till he left Suffolk - men who, place them in the green fields, cannot tell one tree from another. It is true his early works are less artificial and less academical, but they are far truer to nature, to elevated nature. His early pictures exhibit a remarkable variety of form in his trees; his oaks are inimitable; latterly, all his trees assumed one form; for he mistook system for nature. View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
This eminent painter, whose contempt for the follies of mankind kept pace with his acute observation of them, was so disgusted at the blind preference paid to his powers of portraiture that for many years of his residence at Bath he regularly shut up all his landscapes in the back apartments of his house, to which no common visitors were admitted. The landscape that first found its way into any collection was purchased of him by the late Henry Hoare, Esq., of Stourhead, on a friend's recommendation! and so little even then was the merit of Gainsborough duly estimated that Mr. Bampfylde, a dilettante in painting, being on a visit to Stourhead, offered to mend Gainsborough's sheep by repainting them, and was allowed to do so. They have been restored to their original deficiencies by the taste and good sense of the present possessor of that beautiful place [Sir Richard Colt Hoare ]. View quote
Thomas Gainsborough
..Turner did not believe that colour was reducible to system; and Gainsborough, when painting his 'Blue Boy', seems to have been of the same opinion. I think it was the remark of Mr. Field, when we were looking at that celebrated picture [ Blue Boy ], that Gainsborough's eye was truer than his head, since against his theory he had introduced a sufficiency of warm colours into the flesh tints to balance the predominating cold of the picture. (Thomas Gainsborough)