Thomas Gainsborough

Quotes

• “I am favoured with your obliging letter, and shall finish your picture in two or three days at farthest, and send to Colchester according to your order, with a frame. I thank you. Sir, for your kind intention of procuring me a few heads to paint when I come over, which I purpose doing as soon as some of those are finished which I have [now] in hand. I should be glad if you'd place your picture as far from the light as possible; observing to let the light fall from the left.”
• “damn gentlemen, there is not such a set of enemies to a real artist in the world as they are, if not kept at a proper distance.. ..They think (and so may you for a while) that they reward your merit by their Company and notice.. ..if they don't stand clear, know that they have but one part worth looking at, and that is their Purse; their Hearts are seldom near enough the right place to get a sight of it..”
• “..though I'm a rogue in talking upon Painting and love to seem to take things wrong I can be serious and honest upon any subject thoroughly pleasing to me.”
• “Many a real genius is lost in the fictitious character of the Gentleman. I am the most inconsistent, changeable being so full of fits and starts.”
• “One part of a picture ought to be like the first part of a tune, that you guess what follows, and that makes the second part of the tune, and so I'm done..”
• “[I] Pray do you remember carrying me to a picture-dealer's somewhere by Hanover Square, [London], and my being struck with the leaving and touch of a little bit of tree[?]; the whole picture was not above 8 or 10 inches high and about a foot long. I wish if you had time that you'd inquire what it might be purchased for..”

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