18th century art
9781907372506
A01=Hugh Belsey
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Hugh Belsey
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Casemate
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=ACQ
Category=AFC
Category=AGA
Category=AGB
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_art-fashion-photography
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Gainsborough's Cottage Doors:
Hugh Belsey
Language_English
masterpiece drafts
PA=Available
painting
Paul Holberton Publishing
portrait artist
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
romanticism
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781907372506
- Weight: 540g
- Dimensions: 216 x 260mm
- Publication Date: 19 Jun 2013
- Publisher: Paul Holberton Publishing Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Inspired by the recent identification of a third autograph version of Gainsborough’s masterpiece The Cottage Door, this book examines the significance of the multiple versions of designs that the artist produced during the 1780s. It demonstrates that without the pressure of exhibiting his work annually at the Academy and without a string of sitters waiting for their finished portraits, Gainsborough’s work became more personal, more thoughtful. This study of the last phase of the artist’s work is a totally fresh interpretation of not only The Cottage Door but other key works such as Mrs Sheridan and Diana and Acteon. Gainsborough’s creative energies changed around 1780. He became restless and wanted to promote his landscape painting more effectively. He started to paint coastal scenes using an innovative painting technique to depict the water and he embarked on a series of ‘fancy’ pictures that he would position him as a descendant of an Old Master tradition. He was never happy with the constraints of the Royal Academy and he was at odds with the dictatorial opinions promoted by its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Removing himself from the Academy enabled him finally to do what he wanted. He began to turn to portrait compositions that he had developed and refined over a number of years. With subtle alterations they could be made suitable for a variety of sitters. The subtlety of his skilled observation was less easy to accommodate in standard-sized full-length canvases and in these portraits he sometimes resorted to rhetoric gesture that fought against the closely observed likenesses in his best portraits. The margin between ‘fancy’ pictures and portraits became blurred and the categorization of some of these paintings changed while they were on the easel. Always finding composition difficult, rather than begin something new he often revisited earlier designs that had pleased him. He would paint them again and make slight changes of tone and emphasis that would radically change the concept and intention of the design. The subject matter in some of his late paintings veers towards the autobiographical and shows a certain rift between him and his family.
