DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61291#0042
3°
GAINSBOROUGH
delight of Van Dyck was dying out, and all the
conditions of social life seemed inimical to
the culture of beauty for its own sake. Yet
somehow the ethereal germ of original art pro-
duction did take root in the apparently uncon-
genial soil, and sprang up into a many-sided
growth which won the reluctant admiration even
of foreign critics. The lifeless repetition of out-
worn themes was replaced by the study of living
forms. Truthful representations of contemporary
men and women, of real peasants toiling or
taking their ease in English fields and lanes,
superseded classic groves with their imaginary
tenants. In a word, a new movement had begun
for art, and in this movement none took a more
important part than did Thomas Gainsborough,
whose early associations were all with trade, and
none of whose ancestors had shown any special
predilection for art.
LANDSCAPE WORK
It is difficult now, when every amateur can
provide himself for a few shillings with all
manner of aids to outdoor work, to realize the
difficulties which hampered the painter of land-
scape in the time of Gainsborough. What the
French call the plein-air artist had absolutely
GAINSBOROUGH
delight of Van Dyck was dying out, and all the
conditions of social life seemed inimical to
the culture of beauty for its own sake. Yet
somehow the ethereal germ of original art pro-
duction did take root in the apparently uncon-
genial soil, and sprang up into a many-sided
growth which won the reluctant admiration even
of foreign critics. The lifeless repetition of out-
worn themes was replaced by the study of living
forms. Truthful representations of contemporary
men and women, of real peasants toiling or
taking their ease in English fields and lanes,
superseded classic groves with their imaginary
tenants. In a word, a new movement had begun
for art, and in this movement none took a more
important part than did Thomas Gainsborough,
whose early associations were all with trade, and
none of whose ancestors had shown any special
predilection for art.
LANDSCAPE WORK
It is difficult now, when every amateur can
provide himself for a few shillings with all
manner of aids to outdoor work, to realize the
difficulties which hampered the painter of land-
scape in the time of Gainsborough. What the
French call the plein-air artist had absolutely