Ozias Humphry on Thomas Gainsborough

“..to which and succeeding excursions the public are indebted for the greater part of the sketches and more finished drawings from time to time produced by that whimsical, ingenious, but very deserving artist. Mr. Gainsborough painted during these years several landscapes of extraordinary merit that were mostly executed by candle light, to which he was much accustomed.”

“In Bath his general practice was in portraiture, in which he had peculiar excellence and frequently produced pictures of surprising resemblance and perfection. Likeness alone was all he avowed to aim at; from this concentration it must often have happened that although his pictures were exactly like and to the parties for whom they were painted, and their families, highly satisfactory at the time whilst the prevailing modes were daily seen and the friends approved and beloved in them, yet the satisfaction arising from this resemblance was lessening daily as the fleeting fashions varied, and were changing from time to time.”

“Exact resemblance in his portraits.. ..was Mr. Gainsborough's constant aim, to which he invariably adhered. These pictures, as well as his landscapes [around Bath ], were frequently wrought by candlelight, and generally with great force and likeness. But his painting room - even by day a kind of darkened twilight - had scarcely any light, and I have seen him, whilst his subjects have been sitting to him, when neither they nor the pictures were scarcely discernible.. ..and having previously determined and marked with chalk upon what part of the canvas the face [of the model] was to be painted it was so placed upon the easel as to be close to the subject he was painting; which gave him an opportunity (as he commonly painted standing) of comparing the dimensions and effect of the copy with the original, both near and at a distance. By this method, with incessant study and exertion, he acquired the power of giving the masses and general forms of his models with the utmost exactness. Having thus settled the groundwork of his portraits he let in (of necessity) more light for the finishing of them.”