drawing
- Museum number
- Gg,3.389
- Description
-
Open landscape with cottage, pool, and distant church, after Gainsborough
Watercolour
- Production date
- 1759-1763
- Dimensions
-
Height: 61 millimetres
-
Width: 87 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Clifford et al., 1978
The attribution of this drawing, which was doubted by Woodall and rejected by Hayes, deserves reconsideration. According to a note on the back in Cracherode's hand, the drawing had been given by the artist to Samuel Collins, a miniature painter. Collins, who was a native of Bristol, worked at Bath but removed to Dublin c. 1762/3 where he died in October 1768. His chief claim to fame was as the master of Ozias Humphrey. Collins was certainly an acquaintance of Gainsborough whom he introduced to the musician William Jackson ('Autobiography of William Jackson', 'The Leisure Hour', May 1882, p. 276). Gainsborough also apparently painted a portrait of him (G. C. Williamson, 'Ozias Humphrey', London, 1918, p. 221). If the inscription is to be believed, this drawing must date from between October 1759, when Gainsborough arrived in Bath, and 1762/3, when Collins left Bath for Dublin. This does not necessarily mean that it was drawn in 1760 (pace Woodall p. 58).
Woodall associated this drawing with a small study attributed to William Marlow in the British Museum (Gg,3.396), also from Cracherode's Bequest. But Marlow's drawing is similar only in size, and, as Miss Woodall admits, "the actual shape of the tree is quite different and the linear conventions employed often differ from those which are most characteristic of Gainsborough". Although the size of the present drawing is unusual for Gainsborough, the composition, palette, pointillist foreground and feathery convention for foliage all appear in his work c. 1760. The provenance is one of the soundest for any Gainsborough drawing. Perhaps the artist gave this miniature landscape in return for a miniature portrait by Collins. In a similar way John Bacon (1740-99) exchanged a profile marble portrait of Mason Chamberlain (d. 1787) for his own portrait painted on canvas (both now in the National Portrait Gallery). This exquisite small landscape is of considerable importance if it can be accepted as Gainsborough's work, for it must date from 1759-1762/3, and there are few watercolour landscapes that can be dated with this degree of accuracy.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1978, BM, Gainsborough and Reynolds in the BM, no. 26
- Acquisition date
- 1799
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- Gg,3.389