We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.
Gainsborough
On sale
10th August 2017
Price: £25
** Selected as a Book of the Year in The Times, Sunday Times and Observer **
‘Compulsively readable – the pages seem to turn themselves’ John Carey, Sunday Times
‘Brings one of the very greatest [artists] vividly to life’ Literary Review
Thomas Gainsborough lived as if electricity shot through his sinews and crackled at his finger ends. He was a gentle and empathetic family man, but had a volatility that could lead him to slash his paintings, and a loose libidinous way of speaking, writing and behaving that shocked many deeply. He would be dynamite in polite society today.
In this exhilarating new biography – the first in decades – James Hamilton reveals Gainsborough in his many contexts: the easy-going Suffolk lad, transported to the heights of fashion by a natural talent; the rake-on-the-make in London, learning his art in the shadow of Hogarth; falling on his feet when he married a duke’s daughter with a handsome private income; the top society-portrait painter in Bath and London who earned huge sums by bringing the right people into his studio; the charming and amusing friend of George III and Queen Charlotte who nevertheless kept clear of the aristocratic embrace.
There has been much art history written about this chameleon of art, but with fresh insights into original sources, Gainsborough: A Portrait transforms our understanding of this fascinating man, and enlightens the century that bore him.
‘Compulsively readable – the pages seem to turn themselves’ John Carey, Sunday Times
‘Brings one of the very greatest [artists] vividly to life’ Literary Review
Thomas Gainsborough lived as if electricity shot through his sinews and crackled at his finger ends. He was a gentle and empathetic family man, but had a volatility that could lead him to slash his paintings, and a loose libidinous way of speaking, writing and behaving that shocked many deeply. He would be dynamite in polite society today.
In this exhilarating new biography – the first in decades – James Hamilton reveals Gainsborough in his many contexts: the easy-going Suffolk lad, transported to the heights of fashion by a natural talent; the rake-on-the-make in London, learning his art in the shadow of Hogarth; falling on his feet when he married a duke’s daughter with a handsome private income; the top society-portrait painter in Bath and London who earned huge sums by bringing the right people into his studio; the charming and amusing friend of George III and Queen Charlotte who nevertheless kept clear of the aristocratic embrace.
There has been much art history written about this chameleon of art, but with fresh insights into original sources, Gainsborough: A Portrait transforms our understanding of this fascinating man, and enlightens the century that bore him.
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
With great imaginative verve [Hamilton recreates] the social atmosphere of the places where the artist and his family settled ... [Hamilton] is constantly fascinating about the paintings ... His book is gorgeously illustrated and compulsively readable - the pages seem to turn themselves. Almost as good as owning a Gainsborough
A shrewd and entertaining biography ... Hamilton's approach is influenced by his perception that Gainsborough owed much to Hogarth ... This valuable insight informs both Hamilton's exploration of Gainsborough's art and his thorough and imaginative interpretation of the life ... Hamilton's book brings one of the very greatest [artists] vividly to life
James Hamilton's wholly absorbing biography is very different from the usual kind of art historical study that often surrounds such a major figure as Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88). Hamilton is positively in love with his subject, and writes with verve and enthusiasm, yet grounds it on vast research with primary and secondary sources, all impeccably noted
Colourful and thoughtful ... What Hamilton's vivid book makes clear is just how lucky some of his sitters were; what they got for their guineas was not simply a likeness of imperishable glamour, but the company of a man who was every bit as lively and engaging as his paintings
Although [Hamilton's] primary focus is the life rather than the work ... the vivid descriptions of Gainsborough's studio practice breathe an authentic whiff of turps and linseed oil into the story ... Highly readable and brilliantly reconstructed
Hamilton is a first-rate art historian ... He gives us deft explanations of mysterious artistic effects - Gainsborough's use of ground glass in the medium, and how he might have learnt about it, and what it does to the surface. But the question of money is Hamilton's core expertise: how much Gainsborough earned and how much of it went on necessary display, such as grand houses in Bath and Pall Mall. And fascinating it is, too ... Gainsborough is one of the most lovable of great artists, and his personality shines through. This is an enjoyable biography by a writer who understands him
[A] richly humane biography of the artist ... [An] astute yet generous book
[A] wonderful new biography ... Hamilton is fascinating on Gainsborough's experimental and innovative technique, how he moved from what he calls the 'dabbing' of the artist's early paintings, with their more doll-like figures and outlines, to the characteristic loose sweeps, the 'brushing' style of his later work
A fine and empathetic portrait [of] a man who was as lively as his brushwork
Hamilton's Gainsborough is a 'Jack-the-Lad', a 'swigging, gigging, kissing, drinking, fighting' good-time city boy in London and Bath ... [Hamilton] is strong both on the Gainsborough who is stirred by harvest gleaners and woodland cottages, and the Gainsborough who frets about his framing fees and boasts about the musical instruments he has bought ... [The book] gallops along at highwayman's pace
Were Mr and Mrs Andrews complete pricks? In his delightfully racy portrait of one of our most renowned British portraitists, the art historian James Hamilton suggests that Thomas Gainsborough's wedding picture of a pair of snooty Suffolk landowners is adorned with more pictures of penises than the wall of a public loo. This is just one of many new lights cast on Gainsborough, a "swigging, gigging, kissing, drinking, fighting" Jack-the-lad who, with his gift of the gab and his canny eye on the main chance, cavorts through Georgian England
Spendthrift, talking nineteen to the dozen, laddish, musical and often resentful of the sitters that he had to paint in order to earn a living ("confounded ugly creatures"), [Gainsborough] is brought to lively and likeable life in Gainsborough: A Portrait by James Hamilton. The painter was, Hamilton says, more serious about his art than he let on, but it is those trace elements of his personality that give his pictures their sparkle
This account of the Georgian portrait painter's life is set against a backdrop of dirt and highwaymen and skeletons on gibbets on Hounslow Heath. An 18th-century Scottish sex therapist even makes an appearance. But for all the fun the author has with the painter's penchant for drink and sex, the writing really takes off when Hamilton engages with Gainsborough's paintings themselves in all their swimmy, silken sheen
Glitters from beginning to end
This affectionate and intricately researched biography is a memorable account of Gainsborough as 'one of the most joyous eccentrics' of his time
[Gainsborough's] tetchiness animates this enjoyable biography, which also shows how his techniques were ahead of their time