Gainsborough Cottage Door

Thomas gainsborough was the first british artist to employ cottages as a major subject in what has become known as his cottage door paintings painted during the final decades of his life.

Gainsborough cottage door. These show country folk gathered around the open door of a cottage usually in a clearing in the forest. And was in the vanguard of a late 18th century fad of interest in them. He is reported by various biographies to have bought.

The cottage door combines a sweeping composition with loosely handled and thinly painted foliage and bright narrative details such as brooms pots bundles of firewood and animated figures. The artificiality of gainsborough s concept of rural cottage life is suggested by the fact that although he began to record scenes of peasant families gathered outside their woodland cottages in the late 1760s it was only after his 1774 move from bath to london when his distance from the countryside was greatest and the demands of his portrait practice most taxing that he became deeply engaged in the theme as a vehicle for expressing the pleasurable sensations he associated with rural. He painted quickly and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes.

At gainsborough we re all about opening a world of possibilities. Its showing at the timken represents a major partnership with ucla to allow the public to see a painting that usually remains in storage. The cottage door was created in c 1778 by thomas gainsborough in rococo style.

We have built our reputation on developing and producing leading edge door hardware that work silently to reflect your style and needs because we know the most important thing isn t what s on your door it s what s behind it. Late in his career thomas gainsborough became preoccupied with the theme of the cottage door and he created a group of paintings and drawings that show rustic figures clustered around the open door of a cottage set in a deeply wooded landscape. He surpassed his rival sir joshua reynolds to become the dominant british portraitist of the second half of the 18th century.

In the later years of gainsborough s career he turned to painting the series collectively known as his cottage door series. A peasant smoking at a cottage door is one of gainsborough s most famous paintings in the idealized rustic genre. 2 and he repeated the composition for his friend the violinist felice de giardini.

During his period in bath gainsborough wrote to william jackson expressing his desire to retire to a cottage in the country and expressed similar sentiments to sir william chambers. Gainsborough developed the cottage door theme in 1773 when he made an upright landscape that was purchased by charles 4 th duke of rutland which still forms part of the collection at belvoir castle fig. Hugh belsey tells us that the theme of the cottage door first appeared in gainsborough s work in about 1770.