Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings

Charming exhibition at York Art examining at a set of drawings by Thomas Gainsborough and using them to discuss his early influences.

The 25 newly attributed Thomas Gainsborough drawings were on loan from the Royal Collection are on public display for the first time. The show included a good video on how the drawings were found and attributed and analysed links to some of his completed paintings.

One of Gainsborough's early jobs was for an art dealer in London for whom he added figures to fashionable Dutch landscapes. He was heavily influenced by those works particularly because of the similarities between the landscapes of the Dutch Republic and Suffolk. The show analysed this influence with lovely examples of Dutch work.

He also worked in ‘plaister’ shops making models for decorating interiors and the show points out how he owned a model of a woodman carrying sticks which appears in a number of the drawings as well as Conrad Wood on loan from the National Gallery. The show looked at how he created model landscapes in his studio using broken glass, stones and broccoli.

I loved a discussion in the commentaries about the role of a picturesque donkeys in a landscape to draw the eye. I kept spotting them everywhere!

At the end of the show there was section on two modern reactions to the landscapes including the UK premiere of the triptych video ‘Clay, Peat, Cage’ (by Yorkshire-based artists Jade Montserrat and Webb-Ellis and work created by participants in the gallery’s Teenage Art School over the summer.

Closes 13 February 2022

 

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