Wooded Landscape with Figures and Cows at a Watering Place (The Watering Place)
August 1, 1797
Medium
Soft-ground etching with aquatint; second state of two
Dimensions
sheet: 11 x 13 3/4 in. (27.9 x 34.9 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949
Accession Number
49.50.106
Tags
Art Historical Context
This evocative print, *Wooded Landscape with Figures and Cows at a Watering Place*, captures a tranquil pastoral scene rendered in soft-ground etching with aquatint. Created after a design by Thomas Gainsborough and published on August 1, 1797, by John and Josiah Boydell, the work exemplifies the late 18th-century British interest in idealized rural life. Gainsborough, celebrated for his luminous landscapes and portraits, infused such compositions with a sense of natural harmony and gentle movement, here featuring cattle pausing at a stream amid dense woodland. The medium itself is noteworthy...
About the Artist
Thomas Gainsborough|John & Josiah Boydell · 1727–1788
Thomas Gainsborough was born on 14 May 1727 in Sudbury, Suffolk, the youngest of nine children to wool dealer John Gainsborough and his wife Mary. Demonstrating prodigious talent from childhood, he sketched landscapes in the local woods and fields, fostering his lifelong passion for the genre. At age thirteen, he moved to London, where he trained under the French engraver and illustrator Hubert-Fr...