KEW GARDENS OLD VICTORIAN DRESS, 1857 GAINSBOROUGH Landscape Art Print Engraving

Description: THE WALK AT KEW Artist: T. Gainsborough ____________ Engraver: C. H. Jeens Note: the title in the table above is printed below the engraving CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE 19th CENTURY ANTIQUE PRINTS LIKE THIS ONE!! PRINT DATE: This lithograph was printed in 1856; it is not a modern reproduction in any way. PRINT SIZE: Overall print size is 8 1/2 inches by 11 1/2 inches including white borders, actual scene is 7 1/2 inches by 9 1/2 inches. PRINT CONDITION: Condition is excellent. Bright and clean. Blank on reverse. Paper is quality woven rag stock paper. SHIPPING: Buyer to pay shipping, domestic orders receives priority mail, international orders receive regular air mail unless otherwise asked for. We take a variety of payment options, more payment details will be in our email after auction close. We pack properly to protect your item! FROM THE ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: Gainsborough was a man singularly endowed with the gifts of Nature; handsome in person, gentle and always cheerful in disposition, of brilliant conversational powers, well skilled m music, of rare and varied talent as a painter, blessed at an early age with a wife in every way suited to him, and with the additional advantage of possessing an income that placed the young couple (neither had seen twenty years when they were united) in comparative independence: seldom, indeed, has an artist entered into the uncertain arena of his profession under such favorable circumstances. But Ins art was his idol-next to his Margaret-and in spite of clouds, which will occasionally flit across the brightest skies, he threw his entire soul into the work he had chosen and for which he was so fitted, and his success was commensurate with his enthusiastic devotion. Historical painters are very frequently great in portraiture, but it is most rare to meet with landscape-painters who excel in portraying the "form and lineaments " of the human face Gainsborough was one of the few masters of both styles; so much so, that critics have pronounced a divided judgment as to which to give the palm of superiority. At one time busy amid the green lanes, and verdant fields, and the homely cottage-children of his native county, Suffolk , and at another immortalizing on his canvas the features of the great men who thronged the Court of George III. ; he succeeded equally at home in both. " He is the best English landscape painter," &c., Reynolds is reported to have said of him one day in the hearing of Richard Wilson;-" He is not," replied the latter, " the best landscape-painter, but he is the best portrait-painter." Although those opinions were doubtless not exactly those -which the two speakers, who were no over-friendly towards each other, really entertained, they may be accepted as tolerably correct evidence of the high estimation in which both held Gainsborough. If we accept the dying words of the artist- words spoken when the shadows of death hid more than half obscured the light of an intelligence yet busy with the memories of his Art- as indicating that class in which he most delighted, we may assume it to be portraiture. A short time only before he breathed his lust, ho exclaimed with unusual rapture,-" We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke is of the company! " Bat they who associated with him, and best knew his feelings, have recorded that lie never desired to rest his reputation on his portraits; they were the "business" part of 1m profession, not its pleasant pastime; he loved to exchange the lace, and ruffles, and satin vests, and well-turned perukes of fashionable life, for the straw-hat and coarse habiliments of some ruddy-checked maiden at her cottage-door, or sturdy waggoner "driving his team a-field." The picture in the Royal Collection hero engraved unites the two styles of portrait and landscape, though the latter has an aristocratic character which carries us away from the painters usual sylvan scenery: the carefully-trimmed lawns and graceful foliage of Kew-gardens differ essentially from the homeliness and rusticity of his Suffolk views. It is altogether elegant in composition- in the bearing of the figures and in the forms of the trees--except in the angle caused by the arrangement of the ladies' dresses; this is not agreeable to the eye. The personages introduced are presumed to be-for some doubt has been expressed on the subject-Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, third son of the Prince of Wales, eldest son of George II.; his wife, Anne Horton, daughter of Lord lrnliam; and the Lady Elizabeth Luttrell : the duke died without issue, September 18th, 1790. It was this marriage, and that of Cumberland's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who married the dowager Countess of Waldegrave, that led to the passing of the "Royal Marriage Act." The picture hangs in the corridor at Windsor Castle. BIOGRAPHY OF ARTIST: Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) was an English painter, one of the greatest masters of the English school in portraiture, and only less so in landscape, was born at Sudbury, Suffolk, in the spring of 1727. His father, who carried on the business of a woollen crape-maker in that town, was of a respectable character and family, and was noted for his skill in fencing; his mother excelled in flower-painting, and encouraged her son in the use of the pencil. There were nine children of the marriage, two of the painter's brothers being of a very ingenious turn. At ten years old, Gainsborough "had sketched every fine tree and picturesque cottage near Sudbury," and at fourteen, having filled his task-books with caricatures of his schoolmaster, and sketched the portrait of a man whom he had detected on the watch for robbing his father's orchard, he was allowed to follow the bent of his genius in London, with some instruction in etching from Gravelot, and under such advantages as Hayman, the historical painter, and the academy in St Martin's Lane could afford. Three years of study in the metropolis, where he did some modeling and a few landscapes, were succeeded by two years in the country. Here he fell in love with Margaret Burr, a young lady of many charms, including an annuity of £200, married her after painting her portrait, and a short courtship, and, at the age of twenty, became a householder in Ipswich, his rent being £6 a year. The annuity was reported to come from Margaret's real (not her putative) father, who was one of the exiled Stuart princes or else the duke of Bedford. She was sister of a young man employed by Gainsborough's father as a traveler. At Ipswich, Gainsborough tells us, he was " chiefly in the face-way "; his sitters were not so numerous as to prevent him from often rambling with his friend Joshua Kirby (president of the Society of Artists) on the banks of the Orwell, from painting many landscapes with an attention to details which his later works never exhibited, or from joining a musical club and entertaining himself and his fellow-townsmen by giving concerts. As he advanced in years he became ambitious of advancing in reputation. Bath was then the general resort of wealth and fashion, and to that city, towards the close of the year 1759, ,he removed with his wife and two daughters, the only issue of their marriage. His studio in the circus was soon thronged with visitors; he gradually raised his price for a half-length portrait from 5 to 40 guineas, and for a whole-length from 8 to 100 guineas; and he rapidly developed beyond the comparatively plain and humdrum quality of his Ipswich paintings. Among his sitters at this period were the authors Sterne and Richardson, and the actors Quin, Henderson and Garrick. Meanwhile he contributed both portraits and landscapes to the annual exhibitions in London. He indulged his taste for music by learning to play the viol-di-gamba, the harp, the hautboy, the violoncello. His house harbored Italian, German, French and English musicians. He haunted the green-room of Palmer's theatre, and painted gratuitously' the portraits of many of the actors: he constantly gave away his sketches and landscapes. In the summer of 1774, having already attained a position of great prosperity, he took his departure for London, and fixed his residence at Schomberg House, Pall Mall, a noble mansion still standing, for a part of which the artist paid £300 a year. Gainsborough had not been many months in London ere he received a summons to the palace, and to the end of his career he divided with West the favour of the court, and with Reynolds the favor of the town. Sheridan, Burke, Johnson, Franklin, Canning, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mrs Siddons, Clive, Blackstone, Hurd, were among the number of those who sat to him. But in London as in Bath his landscapes were exhibited, were commended, and were year after year returned to him, "till they stood," says Sir William Beechey, "ranged in long lines from his hall to his 'painting-room." Gainsborough was a member of the Royal Academy, one of the original 36 elected in 1768; but in 1784, being dissatisfied with the position assigned on the exhibition walls to his portrait of the three princesses,' he withdrew that and his other pictures, and he never afterwards exhibited there. Even before this he had taken no part in the business of the Institution. After seceding he got up an exhibition in his own house, not successfully. In February 1788, while witnessing the trial of Warren Hastings, he felt an extraordinary' chill at the back of his neck; this was the beginning of a cancer (or, as some say, a malignant wen) which proved fatal on the 2nd of August of the same year. He lies buried at Kew. Please note: the terms used in our auctions for engraving, etching, lithograph, plate, photogravure etc. are ALL prints on paper, and NOT blocks of steel or wood or any other material. "ENGRAVINGS", the term commonly used for these paper prints, were the most common method in the 1700s and 1800s for illustrating old books, and these paper prints or "engravings" were created by the intaglio process of etching the negative of the image into a block of steel, copper, wood etc, and then when inked and pressed onto paper, a print image was created. These prints or engravings were usually inserted into books, although many were also printed and issued as loose stand alone lithographs. They often had a tissue guard or onion skin frontis to protect them from transferring their ink to the opposite page and were usually on much thicker quality woven rag stock paper than the regular prints. So this auction is for an antique paper print(s), probably from an old book, of very high quality and usually on very thick rag stock paper. A RARE FIND! AND GREAT DECORATION FOR YOUR OFFICE OR HOME WALL.

Price: 6.99 USD

Location: New Providence, New Jersey

End Time: 2024-12-19T15:18:08.000Z

Shipping Cost: 7.95 USD