A Herdsman with Three Cows by an Upland Pool

Cleveland Museum of Art

A Herdsman with Three Cows by an Upland Pool

Thomas GainsboroughLinkedCulture matchlcp-5fd7040ad1f9

Date
mid-1780s
Medium
watercolor, ink and oil paint heightened with white chalk ("Bristol lead white")
Culture
England, 18th century
Department
Drawings
Institution
Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID
164753

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Although he was one of the most celebrated society portraitists of his day, landscape painting was Thomas Gainsborough’s love and lifelong pleasure. Here, delicate layers of watercolor, ink, oil paint, and chalk result in a jewel-like work on paper. The composition combines the rural scene of a herdsman and three cows with an imagined, majestic mountain view, mingling the pastoral with the sublime. The sheet was among a group of 14 landscape drawings that Gainsborough selected as a gift for a close friend. Following the instruction of the influential painter and writer Jonathan Richardson, Gainsborough often arranged his landscape compositions with the brightest passage—here, the white cow and billowing clouds—near the center.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Provenance
?-?: Goodenough Earle, Barton Grange, Somerset, England | ?-1794: Francis Miller Newton, by descent to Josepha Sophia Newton | 1848-?: Josepha Sophia Newton | ?-1913: Francis Wheat Newton | 1913-1914: (Agnew's, London) | 1914: (M. Knoedler & Co., New York, NY) | ?-?: George D. Widener [1889-1971], Philadelphia | ?-?: Private collection, by descent to private collection, United States | ?-1989: Private collection, United States | after 1989-2005: David Lee, UK, by descent to private collection | 2005: Private collection | 2005-2006: (Lowell Libson, London, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH) | 2006-: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

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