The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 20, 2023

A Herdsman with Three Cows by an Upland Pool

mid-1780s

Thomas Gainsborough

(British, 1727–1788)

England, 18th century

Watercolor, ink and oil paint heightened with white chalk ("Bristol lead white")

Sheet: 21.9 x 31.3 cm (8 5/8 x 12 5/16 in.)

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2006.156

Catalogue raisonné: Hayes 731

Location

not on view

Fun Fact

Following the instruction of the influential painter and writer Jonathan Richardson, Gainsborough often arranged his landscape compositions with the brightest passage—here, the white cow and billowing clouds—near the center.

Description

Although he was one of the most celebrated society portraitists of his day, landscape painting was Thomas Gainsborough’s love and lifelong pleasure. Here, delicate layers of watercolor, ink, oil paint, and chalk result in a jewel-like work on paper. The composition combines the rural scene of a herdsman and three cows with an imagined, majestic mountain view, mingling the pastoral with the sublime. The sheet was among a group of 14 landscape drawings that Gainsborough selected as a gift for a close friend.

Provenance
?-?
Goodenough Earle, Barton Grange, Somerset, England
?-1794
Francis Miller Newton, by descent to Josepha Sophia Newton
1848-?
Josepha Sophia Newton
?-1913
Francis Wheat Newton
1913-1914
(Agnew's, London)
1914
(M. Knoedler & Co., New York, NY)
?-?
George D. Widener [1889-1971], Philadelphia
?-?
Private collection, by descent to private collection, United States
?-1989
Private collection, United States
after 1989-2005
David Lee, UK, by descent to private collection
2005
Private collection
2005-2006
(Lowell Libson, London, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)
2006-
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Fulcher, George. The Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1856. Mentioned: p. 241
Hayes, John. "The Gainsborough Drawings from Barton Grange: Eight Published for the First Time." Connoisseur 161 (February 1966): 86-93. Mentioned: pp. 86-93; Reproduced: fig. 14
Hayes, John. The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough. New Haven: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1971. Mentioned: vol. 1, p. 276, no. 731; Reproduced: vol. 2, pl. 214
Hayes, John. Thomas Gainsborough. Exh. Cat. London: Tate Gallery, 1980. Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 70-71, no. 47
Hayes, John and Lindsay Stainton. Gainsborough Drawings. Exh. Cat. Washington, DC: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1983. Mentioned: p. 174, no. 79; Reproduced: facing page
Libson, Lowell, Hugh Belsey, and Peter Bower. Thomas Gainsborough: Themes and Variations, the Art of Landscape. Exh. Cat. London: Lowell Libson, 2003. Mentioned: pp. 13, 18-19, 40-42, no. 5; Reproduced: pp. 18-19, 40-42
Litt, Steven. "Museum Buys Rembrandt and Gainsborough Works." Plain Dealer (December 5, 2006): E1, E4. Mentioned: p. E4; Reproduced: p. E1
Lemonedes, Heather. "Quintessentially British." Cleveland Art (July/August 2007). Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 8-11
Belsey, Hugh. "Drawing for Its Own Sake: Five Landscapes by Thomas Gainsborough." In British Painting, Watercolours, and Drawings, ed. Lowell Libson. Exh. Cat. London: Lowell Libson, 2011. Mentioned: pp. 15-19; Reproduced: fig. 5
Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013. Mentioned: pp. 38-41, 145, no. 9a; Reproduced: p. 39
Exhibition history

Thomas Gainsborough: Themes and Variations, The Art of Landscape. Lowell Libson, London (May 2003).

Gainsborough Drawings. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (October 2 - December 4, 1983); Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (December 17, 1983 - February 12, 1984); Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT (February 25 - April 22, 1984).

Thomas Gainsborough. Tate Gallery, London (October 8, 1980 - January 4, 1981).

British Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art . The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 10-May 26, 2013).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2006.156