Gainsborough

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Arts Gainsborough at the MFA by Gert Innsry How does a modern person look at classical portraiture? The experience of photography has forever changed how we see realistic painting, altering the criteria for success, or even interest. At the time Gainsborough worked, degree of likeness was a major determinant in evaluating the quality of a work. Today, any of us can produce a better likeness with a six dollar disposable camera.

Other criteria must supercede and reinforce accuracy of reproduction. Vividness of personality becomes the chief indicator of the portraitist's art, followed by the design of the picture and historical information captured by the picture's content. In the Gainsborough exhibit mounted by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the importance of these criteria becomes evident.

Gainsborough had a long career as a portrait painter, although his preferred form was landscapes. In his early portraits, his subjects have long, lean bodies and faces. Their clothing and the symbols of their rank are nicely portrayed, but the subjects are lifeless and dull, however accurately their features are limned. Similarly, landscapes from this period are muddy, as if viewed on a hazy day. Interestingly, his drawings (mostly landscape sketches in this exhibit) are clear and vibrant, the quick strokes giving us a glimpse of the scene through an artist's eye. The black and white sketches have a clarity that the oils lack, much as black and white photos or movies have a starkness and power not present in a colorized version.

When the influence of Van Dyke altered Gainsborough's painting, his portraits became more interesting, mostly through better lighting of the subjects' faces. A few portraits from this period and later are in fact outstanding, especially the 1772 small painting of Gainsborough Dupont, a cousin of the artist. Here Gainsborough endows his subject with a vividness not seen is most of his other work. Two other paintings that approach this one in quality are the 1785 "Cottage Girl with Pitcher" and the 1785 "Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan", The portrait of the writer Sheridan's wife, Elizabeth Lindley, perfectly represents the sadness of her life. Having been a celebrated singer, Elizabeth Lindley was forced to give up the stage by her abusive and increasingly alcoholic husband. The tragedy of talent going to waste shows clearly in her face. The portrait of the waifish cottage girl also captures vulnerability and humanity in a manner neglected in his more formal portraiture. Both the girl and her puppy are living beings.

It is ironic that however lifeless the bulk of his human subjects appear, the dogs and horses that occasionally share their pictures sparkle. Perhaps instead of being an indifferent landscapist and a skilled but wooden portraitist, Gainsborough's real but unpursued calling was animal depictions.