A path around a knoll, cottages beyond

The present drawing was once in a sketchbook. Several of such sketchbooks appeared as lots 81-84 and 86-88 in a Christie's sale of 11 May 1799, consigned by Margaret Gainsborough, the artist's daughter, following the death of her mother in 1798. One sketchbook (lot 85) was subsequently bequeathed to the British Museum by Richard Payne Knight. Three were purchased by George Hibbert and later appeared in the Mrs A.H. Holland-Hibbert sale at Christie's 1913 (see above); three other sketch books were bought by a Mr Pugh and one by Colnaghi. The present sheet is the same size as several of the Hibbert drawings and is almost certainly a page from one of the sketchbooks originally sold as lot 82, 84 or 88 in 1799. For comparable drawings from the Hibbert sketch books, datable to the early 1780s, see J. Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, London, 1970, pp. 234-38, nos. 545-62, pls. 175-6.