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Packhorses: The Midday Rest

Packhorses: The Midday Rest

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Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough painted portraits of the English gentry to earn his living, but he wanted to be known as a landscape painter. Some of his best landscapes, including Packhorses: The Midday Rest, were painted in the last decade of his life. These small, imaginary landscapes with idealized scenes of peasant life show the strong influence of Rubens and the 17th century Dutch landscape artists and, in turn, influenced the next generation, especially the English landscape artist John Constable. He painted seven of these small genre scenes, including our pack-horses, in 1786. In many of these he used a mother and young child at the door of a remote, rustic cottage with a drover and pack-horses nearby.
Artist
Thomas Gainsborough
(English, 1727 - 1788)
Title
Packhorses: The Midday Rest
Date
1786
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
22 1/4 x 28 1/4 in. Overall
Credit
Thomas E. Brittingham Fund purchase
Accession No.
71.15
Classification
Paintings
Geography
England

Related

<span>1902, sold by Charles Tennant. 1920, acquired by Robert Henry Benson (Withyham, Sussex, England); 1929, by bequest to his son Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Reginald (Rex) Lindsay Benson; to Lady Leslie Benson (Singleton, Sussex, England); 23 March 1960, sold by Lady Benson at Sotheby’s (London) auction [lot 75] to Thomas Agnew &amp; Sons (London) on commission for Colonel Steven James Lindsay Hardie (1885-1969) (Perthshire, Scotland); 19 November 1969, sold by Hardie at Sotheby’s (London) auction [lot 120] to Leger Galleries, Ltd. (London, England); June 1971, sold by Leger Galleries to the Elvehjem Art Center [now called Chazen Museum of Art]</span>

  • Rogers, Millard F., Jr. "Paintings at the Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin." The Magazine Antiques. Vol. CVIII, No. 6, December (1975). pp. 1154-1155, fig. 11
  • Committee on Institutional Cooperation. "Paintings from Midwestern University Collections: Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries." Evanston, Ill.: Committee on Institutional Cooperation, 1973. p. 20, no. 60-61
  • Elvehjem Museum of Art. "Handbook of the Collection." Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison, 1990. no. 71
  • Elvehjem Museum of Art. "Artscene." Vol. 7, No. 5 November/ December 1991. p. 7
  • Hayes, John. "Gainsborough's Later Landscapes." Apollo Magazine, vol. 80, no. 29 (July 1964). 25, not illustrated
  • John Hayes. "The Landscape Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough: A Critical Text and Catalogue Raisonné." Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1982. Vol. 1: pp. 164-165; Vol. 2: pp. 316-317, 540-541, Vol. 1: fig. 197; Vol. 2: cat no. 162
  • Henry Bate-Dudley. "Morning Herald." 8 April 1786.
  • Woodall, Mary. “Gainsborough Landscapes at Nottingham University.” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 104, no. 717 (1962). pp. 561-562, not illustrated
  • Davis, Frank. "Talking about Sales-Rooms: Paintings to Gloat Over," Country Life, 1 January 1970. p. 12, fig. 2
  • "An Exhibition of English Paintings 1750-1900." London: The Leger Galleries Ltd, 1970. pp. 9-10, cat no. 13

  • Paintings from Midwestern University Collections: 17th-20th Centuries: Committee on Institutional Cooperation and Member Universities, 10/3/1973–4/27/1975
  • Recent Acquisitions: Elvehjem Art Center, 6/11/1971–8/29/1971
  • An Exhibition of English Paintings 1750-1900: Leger Galleries, 10/7/1970–10/31/1970
  • Gainsborough Landscapes at Nottingham University: , 1/1/1962
  • Exhibition of Works by The Old Masters and Deceased Masters of the British School: , 1/1/1910
  • Schomberg House: , 4/1/1786

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