Gainsborough's vision
"Thomas Gainsborough, one of the most popular of British painters, has been celebrated as a landscapist whose pictures movingly evoke his love of the countryside, as a portrait painter who captured likenesses of astonishing exactness and vivacity, as a powerfully rhythmic and spontaneous draughtsman, and as a man of feeling whose playfully impetuous character is revealed in his art, life, and letters." "Despite their obvious attractions, such judgements have persistently created a difficulty for art criticism that has remained unresolved. Gainsborough's work is not satisfactorily accounted for by the classicising academic criteria which aspired to be the official art theory of his period; nor is it sufficient to label him an anti-intellectual, natural genius. Paying equal attention to portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures, this book demonstrates that Gainsborough's work demands an alternative explanatory framework." "The historical technique of this book reveals that the style, themes, and ideas of Gainsborough's images constitute purposeful expressions of an intellectual and visual culture whose importance in the development of eighteenth-century British art has gone unrecognised."--Jacket
xvi, 325 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 29 cm
9780853238744, 085323874X
43521977
1. Mimesis and Empiricism
2. The Book of Nature
3. Emblem and Rococo
4. The Art of Seeing
5. Ut Musica Pictura
6. The Landscape as Pastoral Object
7. Surprising Likenesses
8. A Skilful and Faithful Observer