Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (1727-1788)

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN

Details

Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (1727-1788)

A wooded Mountain Landscape with a Shepherd, Sheep and a Donkey

black chalk and stump and white chalk on buff paper
9 7/8 x 14in. (252 x 356mm.)

Provenance

Major Eric Knight; Knight Sale; Christie's, 1 Dec 1944, lot 2 (to Agnew's)
Dr H.A.C. Gregory
With Major Gallery
With Agnew's until 1953

Exhibited

London, Agnew's, 80th Annual Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings, Jan-Mar 1953, no.74
Belfast, Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, Pictures from Ulster Houses, May-July 1961, no.186

Further details

VARIOUS PROPERTIES

Lot Essay

Gainsborough used this drawing, in reverse, for one of the transparencies for his peep-show box of about 1787-8, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (repr. E. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, 1958, pl.263). Hayes relates the treatment of the foliage, the highlights in white chalk, and the use of chalk in the sky to the study for the oil painting of a Woody Mountain Landscape of c.1786 in the Tate Gallery (repr. Waterhouse, op.cit., pl 269; the study repr. Hayes, op.cit, pl.220).

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