THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. (SUDBURY 1727-1788 LONDON)

Dated to circa 1763-4 by John Hayes (op. cit., 1982), this picture is a fine and rare example of Gainsborough’s early Bath period landscapes. As Hayes observes, the composition, which draws on a sketch by the artist in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, 1970, no. 265), is particularly close in style and effect to Gainsborough’s gouache drawings from the early Bath period. He further notes the artist’s ‘real feelings for light in the sunset glow’ (op. cit., 1982) and the atmospheric treatment of the mountain in the distance.