A Visit to Thomas Gainsborough’s Birthplace
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Author: Britney B.
Released 21 August 2003
Market Day in Sudbury
Photograph by Britney B.
The ancient market town of Sudbury in Suffolk, England, set in the heart of the River Stour valley, is well known as the home of the artist Thomas Gainsborough.
An iron age settlement once occupied the high ground on which Sudbury is built, but the foundation of the present town dates from the Middle Ages. The medieval woolen cloth industry, the beginning of river navigation and later the railways and the 19th century silk industry, all helped to generate prosperity. This pretty town, just over the county border from Essex, is one of my favourite country towns and with interesting little shops, lovely picnic areas by the river, and beautiful old medieval buildings, it is a joy to visit.
Gainsborough’s House
Photograph by Britney B.
A short walk down Gainsborough Street in the heart of the town is Gainsborough’s House, the painter’s birthplace and now an excellent museum and gallery. The townhouse has a Georgian façade which was built by the artist’s father, John Gainsborough who was a cloth merchant, though the house itself retains features dating back more than 500 years. In the garden there’s a black mulberry tree which was planted around 1610. When I visited a few weeks ago, the tree was in fruit and visitors were encouraged to pick some berries, which were delicious.
Thomas Gainsborough was one of England’s most celebrated artists and was born here in 1727. Much of his early work depicted local scenes and people. Here can be seen more of the artist’s paintings, drawings and prints on display than anywhere else in the world. Around 25 of his oil paintings are on show, including his earliest known portrait, a magnificent landscape of 1782, and a miniature of his wife.
The young Thomas Gainsborough showed a marked talent for art and at the age of 13 he was sent to London to study. For the next eight years he studied under the engraver Gravelot, and became familiar with the Flemish style of painting which was then very popular with art dealers.
Paintings by Thomas Gainsborough
Gainsborough’s House
Photograph by Britney B.
In 1746 he married Margaret Burr, widely held to be the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Bedford. Before he returned to Sudbury in 1748, Gainsborough produced his first well-known work, The Charterhouse. Two years later he moved to Ipswich, Suffolk, where he had his first commercial success as a painter, completing many small portraits and two larger landscapes commissioned by the Duke of Bedford. In 1759 the Gainsborough family was on the move once more, this time to the fashionable spa town of Bath, where high society congregated. It was in Bath that Gainsborough became truly popular as a portrait artist, concentrating on full-length, life-sized images. He became one of the founders of the Royal Academy in 1768, though he later had a falling out with the organizers of the RA exhibits and after 1784 Gainsborough refused to exhibit at the Royal Academy, and instead, created his own showings at his London house in Pall Mall. During his stay in London, he painted King George III and Queen Charlotte. Before his death in 1788, he turned from portraiture to pictorial compositions, producing in all some 200 landscapes in addition to around 800 portraits of the English aristocracy.
Although it is his portrait work that gives him lasting fame, Gainsborough himself considered landscape painting to be his strong suit. He is unique as an artist in that he neither sought nor accepted students. Nor did he undertake the almost obligatory Grand Tour of Italy and France to study classical art and antiquities. Some of Gainsborough's most popular paintings include The Blue Boy, The Market Cart (Tate Gallery, London), The Wood Gatherers, and Robert Andrews and Mary, His Wife (National Gallery, London).
Do take time to visit Sudbury, and especially Gainsborough’s House, if you are ever in the region. I’m sure you will love it.