Gainsborough's Vision

Front Cover
Liverpool University Press, Jan 1, 1999 - Art - 325 pages
Thomas Gainsborough, one of the most popular British painters, has been celebrated as a landscapist, a portrait painter, and a man of feeling whose impetuous character is revealed in his art, life and letters. This book reveals that the style, themes and ideas of Gainsborough’s paintings constitute purposeful expressions of an intellectual and visual culture whose importance in the development of eighteenth-century British art has gone unrecognized.

"Amal Asfour and Paul Williamson have set out to make us look more knowledgeably at the paintings of Gainsborough... their treatment is richly informative."—George Steiner, The Observer

"Asfour and Williamson display a profound knowledge of 18th-century aesthetics... a highly stimulating book."—The British Art Journal

From inside the book

Contents

THE BOOK OF NATURE
23
EMBLEM AND ROCOCO
54
THE ART OF SEEING
95
S UT MUSICA PICTURA
128
THE LANDSCAPE AS PASTORAL OBJECT
163
SURPRISING LIKENESSES
198
A SKILFUL AND FAITHFUL OBSERVER
226
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Amal Asfour and Paul Williamson are well-respected Liverpool University Press.

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