Conversation dans un parc

1740s

Making a living in London: landscapes, restoration, prints

Landscapes interest the young man most — plant sketches from the 1740s survive. He earns his living with landscapes on commission, touches up old paintings, assists the engraver John Boydell, and helps Francis Hayman decorate the supper boxes in Vauxhall Gardens.

1745

A studio of his own and a “remarkably clever dog”

In 1745 Gainsborough sets up his own studio. One of his first signed pictures, of the same year, shows a bull terrier against a landscape; on the back of the canvas the artist wrote “Remarkably clever dog”.

15 July 1746

Marriage to Margaret Burr

On 15 July 1746 Gainsborough marries Margaret Burr, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Beaufort.

1748

His father dies; back to Sudbury

Gainsborough's father, John, dies in 1748. With no new commissions coming in London, the painter returns to Sudbury, to the house of his childhood.

c. 1749

Landscapes do not pay: a turn to portraiture

Gainsborough has always thought of himself as a landscape painter, but landscapes bring no income: in the England of the day they count as a “low genre”. Around 1749 he unites portrait and landscape in one composition for the first time, in “Mr and Mrs Andrews”.

31 janvier 1750

Daughter born: Mary Gainsborough Fischer