DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61291#0016
4
GAINSBOROUGH
little room in Hatton Garden, where he labori-
ously composed landscapes from his own early
sketches and earned a little money by painting
portraits, little dreaming of the fame his later
work was to bring him. Quite suddenly, at the
end of three years, he resolved to return home;
and although he brought no honours with him,
he was eagerly welcomed back, not only by his
own people, but by his fellow-townsfolk, who
had already made up their minds that he was
destined to win distinction for his native place.
Almost the first thing he did, however, was to
fall in love with a young girl named Margaret
Burr, the sister of one of his father’s travellers,
said to have been the daughter of one of the
exiled Stuarts, although there was absolutely no
proof to justify the rumour, except her unusual
beauty and air of distinction.
The story goes that Thomas Gainsborough
first met his future wife when he was sketching
in a wood near Sudbury, and that she stepped
straight into his heart as well as into his picture.
However that may be the young people soon
became engaged, Gainsborough’s parents, who
were singularly unworldly, making no objection
to their early marriage. True, the bride brought
her husband an annuity of two hundred pounds,
GAINSBOROUGH
little room in Hatton Garden, where he labori-
ously composed landscapes from his own early
sketches and earned a little money by painting
portraits, little dreaming of the fame his later
work was to bring him. Quite suddenly, at the
end of three years, he resolved to return home;
and although he brought no honours with him,
he was eagerly welcomed back, not only by his
own people, but by his fellow-townsfolk, who
had already made up their minds that he was
destined to win distinction for his native place.
Almost the first thing he did, however, was to
fall in love with a young girl named Margaret
Burr, the sister of one of his father’s travellers,
said to have been the daughter of one of the
exiled Stuarts, although there was absolutely no
proof to justify the rumour, except her unusual
beauty and air of distinction.
The story goes that Thomas Gainsborough
first met his future wife when he was sketching
in a wood near Sudbury, and that she stepped
straight into his heart as well as into his picture.
However that may be the young people soon
became engaged, Gainsborough’s parents, who
were singularly unworldly, making no objection
to their early marriage. True, the bride brought
her husband an annuity of two hundred pounds,