Gainsborough at the Tate. (Report from Europe).

Thomas Gainsborough was born in 1727 in Sudbury, Suffolk, the son of John Gainsborough and Mary Burroughs. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to the French draftsman and engraver Hubert Francois Gravelot in London, and that same year he painted his first self-portrait. In 1743 he established his own studio in London, and three years later he married Margaret Burr, the daughter of Henry, duke of Beaufort.

Before returning to Sudbury in 1749, Gainsborough worked with a number of artists, including William Hogarth, Francis Hayman, and Gravelot, as well as collaborating on the decoration of the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall, London. Gainsborough became a fashionable portrait painter, prompting his move to Bath in 1759 and his return to London in 1774. His work was exhibited at most of the Royal Academy's summer exhibitions, but he quarreled twice with that institution. His greatest professional rival was Joshua Reynolds, the founding president of the academy whose approach was different. While Reynolds tended to idealize his sitters in classical guises, ...