拍品專文
This major work is one of Gainsborough's finest drawings of the 1780s. It is a rare example of the artist's use of colour in a late drawing, a technique he experimented with more in the 1770s.
Hayes dates the drawing to the mid to later 1780s and comments that the treatment of the foliage and the chalk and stump work are closely related to J. Hayes, no. 640 (Museum Boymans - Van Beuningen, Rotterdam E5).
Gainsborough drawings were experiments in composition and his diverse arrangements of trees, pools, sheep, tracks and cottages were endlessly rearranged to form lilting landscapes, something 'easy for the eye' as he called the effect in one letter. He used soft chalk, sometimes blurred to form tone with stump - a densely rolled piece of card or leather - which imitates wash. In the 1780s he used dense black chalk often very thickly which gives the drawings a power which had not been seen in his earlier work.
Unusual for this period, when most of Gainsborough's drawings were in monochrome, is the light application of watercolour washes.
Hayes dates the drawing to the mid to later 1780s and comments that the treatment of the foliage and the chalk and stump work are closely related to J. Hayes, no. 640 (Museum Boymans - Van Beuningen, Rotterdam E5).
Gainsborough drawings were experiments in composition and his diverse arrangements of trees, pools, sheep, tracks and cottages were endlessly rearranged to form lilting landscapes, something 'easy for the eye' as he called the effect in one letter. He used soft chalk, sometimes blurred to form tone with stump - a densely rolled piece of card or leather - which imitates wash. In the 1780s he used dense black chalk often very thickly which gives the drawings a power which had not been seen in his earlier work.
Unusual for this period, when most of Gainsborough's drawings were in monochrome, is the light application of watercolour washes.