A Herdsman with Three Cows by an Upland Pool
Medium
watercolor, ink and oil paint heightened with white chalk ("Bristol lead white")
Dimensions
{"sheet":{"height":0.219,"width":0.313}}
Classification
Drawing
Department
Drawings
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Accession Number
2006.156
Tags
About this artwork
Although he was one of the most celebrated society portraitists of his day, landscape painting was Thomas Gainsborough’s love and lifelong pleasure. Here, delicate layers of watercolor, ink, oil paint, and chalk result in a jewel-like work on paper. The composition combines the rural scene of a herdsman and three cows with an imagined, majestic mountain view, mingling the pastoral with the sublime. The sheet was among a group of 14 landscape drawings that Gainsborough selected as a gift for a cl...