Wooded Landscape with Stream
1750–59
Medium
Brush and black ink and gray wash, over graphite, on off-white laid paper, pieced along both vertical edges and laid down on cream laid paper
Dimensions
23.8 × 33.4 cm (9 3/8 × 13 3/16 in.)
Classification
brush and ink
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
149041
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Though more in demand for his society portraits, Thomas Gainsborough expressed his passion for landscape subjects in hundreds of drawings executed throughout of his career. Early drawings made en plein air inspired later landscape sketches, such as this one, that combined directly observed natural elements with more idealized compositions found in the 17th-century French paintings admired by Gainsborough. Clusters of short, detached strokes convey the movement of the trees in the background whil...
About the Artist
Thomas Gainsborough · 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...