Art Institute of Chicago

Wooded Landscape with Stream

Thomas Gainsborough

Date

1750–59

Medium

Brush and black ink and gray wash, over graphite, on off-white laid paper, pieced along both vertical edges and laid down on cream laid paper

Culture

England

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Though more in demand for his society portraits, Thomas Gainsborough expressed his passion for landscape subjects in hundreds of drawings executed throughout of his career. Early drawings made en plein air inspired later landscape sketches, such as this one, that combined directly observed natural elements with more idealized compositions found in the 17th-century French paintings admired by Gainsborough. Clusters of short, detached strokes convey the movement of the trees in the background while longer horizontal lines describe the placid surface of the water running through the scene.

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