Thomas Gainsborough
English, 1727-1788
Wooded Landscape with Stream
INV-1490
Thomas Gainsborough
English, 1727-17881750–59
Wooded Landscape with Stream
Thomas Gainsborough English, 1727-1788 →brush and inkdrawings (visual works)
Date
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.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
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 while longer horizontal lines describe the placid surface of the water running through the scene.
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