12.5 Conclusion
The results of this author’s scientific analysis of paintings by Gainsborough from the 1740s, and of paintings by his British and foreign contemporaries in London, indicate that Gainsborough’s choice of pigments and methods of mixing colours in these early years were close to Netherlandish 17th- and 18th-century practice; he mixed significant amounts of ground glass and the glassy pigment smalt in his colours and also used pigments that were becoming obsolete in Britain at the time but which were available on the continent of Europe. As the unaided eye cannot discern the presence of ground glass and individual pigments in paint, the young Gainsborough must have been taught these practices. Analytical and circumstantial evidence indicate that he spent time with the Griffier family of painters – John Griffier and perhaps his brother Robert Griffier, both of whom were trained in the Netherlandish tradition by their father, Jan Griffier the Elder. John and Robert Griffier worked in London in the 1740s and had active links with the continent of Europe.
Gainsborough signed and dated only two early paintings that we know of – Bumper of 1745 (Private Collection) and Wooded Landscape with a Peasant Resting of 1747 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA); The Charterhouse and Cornard Wood (National Gallery, London) are documented to 1748. To date, significant glassy components and unusual pigments have been found only in Gainsborough’s paintings that art historians have dated tentatively to before 1748. This indicates that his association with the Griffiers took place in the early or middle years of the 1740s. It may also suggest that with technical analysis of more of his paintings from this early period, it may be possible to be more precise about their dating.
22
Thomas Gainsborough
View of Cornard Wood, near Sudbury, Suffolk, 1748
London (England), National Gallery (London), inv./cat.nr. NG925
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank the following people and institutions for their support over the years that I have spent researching young Gainsborough: Hugh Belsey; Mark Bills and the staff at Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk; Christopher Brown; Toby Campbell; The Clothworkers Company of London; the Getty Grant Program; Elizabeth Einberg; Susan Foister; Mark Hallett; Karen Hearn; Sander Karst; Ashok Roy; Jacob Simon; Martin Smith; Marieke Spliethoff; Richard Stephens; Tate, especially Joyce Townsend and the late Lord Antrim; staff and the fellowship program at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA; Alexandra Walker; Martin Wyld; all the private owners of the paintings that I have examined.