- Gainsborough (1727-1788), Thomas
- Wooded Landscape with Buildings, Lake and Rowing Boat
- c.1786
- Drawing
- Black chalk and stump with touches of white chalk on paper
- 27.8x37 cm
- Inv. Nr. 1994.161
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This drawing, from the final phase of Gainsborough’s career, reflects his longstanding interest in the work of classical landscape artists such as Gaspard Dughet and Filippo Lauri, whose paintings were reproduced in print throughout the eighteenth century. Specifically, the composition seems to closely follow an engraving by John Mason, published in 1744, after a painting by Lauri in the collection of the Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (Gainsborough’s House, Accession Number 2002.070).
The bank in the lower left-hand corner, which functions as a ‘repoussior’ – a device that directs the viewer's eye into the composition by bracketing the edge of the image – is particularly evocative of the Dutch and Italian landscape traditions to which Gainsborough was so indebted. Similarly, the image of a boat in the foreground, set against a hillside populated with buildings, is a distinctive theme associated with Bolognese painting. In his exploration of the idealised landscape, across paintings and drawings, Gainsborough continually returned to motifs such as these. - Purchased with grants from the MGC/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the National Art Collections Fund and an anonymous donation given through the National Art Collections Fund and the Gainsborough's House Society Development Trust, November 1994
