Gainsborough and His Place in English Art

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ...by the help of Walpole's annotated catalogues--as Lady Sussex and Lady Barbara Yelverton, Lady Ligonier in a Fancy Dress, Lord Ligonier with his Horse, and Ci Mr. Nuthall. The fifth, Captain Wade, the Master of the Ceremonies at Bath --the great Beau's successor--was entered without disguise. The Lady Sussex is now in the collection of Lord Burton, at Chesterfield House. Lady Sussex was the daughter of Colonel Hall, of Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire. Her daughter Barbara eloped to Gretna Green, at the age of fifteen with a neighbour, Edward Thoroton Gould, by whom she had a son who succeeded to her own barony of Grey de Ruthyn. Mr. Nuthall was a friend of Pitt's. He died in 1775, after being frightened by a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. The Captain Wade still hangs (1904) in the Assembly Rooms at Bath. The next year, 1772, was prolific; no less than fourteen pictures were carried off to London by Wiltshire, but none of these can now be identified beyond a guess. Four portraits and ten landscapes made up the total, but the latter were all drawings in imitation of oil painting. Several things of this kind are still in existence, and on those rare occasions when they appear in salerooms they excite dispute. They are drawings in water colour, very free in handling and bold in effect, painted on stout coarse paper laid down upon canvas, and varnished. One was sold in London in 1896. I have a photograph of it before me now. In subject it is a variation upon a drawing in the Irish National Gallery. The curious castellated building--it was probably imaginary--is the most conspicuous object in both. In both the road runs past it between groups of trees, but there the resemblance ends. In the imitation oil picture a group of...