Thomas Gainsborough

A native of Suffolk, Gainsborough was trained in London in the milieu of Hogarth and the popular French rococo. He worked in Sudbury and Ipswich and rose to fame as a portrait painter in the fashionable resort of Bath. Gainsborough joined the Royal Academy as a founding member and in 1774 returned to London, where he became Reynolds’ major competitor. He later was patronized by the royal family. Although he claimed to prefer landscape painting to portraiture, Gainsborough excelled at capturing the likenesses of Georgian society.

Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.