D'Anvers, N.: Thomas Gainsborough R. A. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1902)

HIS ART

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truer note when he said that, in looking at the
Suffolk master’s renderings of scenery, “ We find
tears in our eyes and know not what brings them.”
Ruskin spoke of his hand being as “light as
the sweep of a cloud, as swift as the flash of a
sunbeam,” although in other respects he scarcely
made sufficient allowance for the conditions
under which Gainsborough worked, for he says,
“His landscapes are rather motives of feeling and
colour than earnest studies, . . . with more of
science than of truth in them”—a distinction as
misleading and noteworthy in its way as that of
Reynolds with regard to the poet’s and painter’s
eye. Redgrave likens the landscape work of
Gainsborough to “the recollection of some sweet
melody which the musician weaves into his theme,
all unconscious that it is a memory”; and, to come
down to contemporary criticism, Brock Arnold
forcibly says: “Gainsborough felt the true charm
of a landscape, not in its details, but in its
spirit; and he attempted to make his picture
convey a similar general impression to the
spectator to that which would be derived from
a contemplation of the original scene.”