Pictures Every Child Should Know / A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People

by Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

From five guineas for half length portraits, he soon raised his price to forty; he had charged eight for full length portraits, but now they went for one hundred. He painted some famous men of the time. The very thought is inspiring of such a company of geniuses with Gainsborough in the centre of the group. He painted Laurence Sterne, who wrote "The Sentimental Journey," and a few other delightful things; also Garrick, the renowned actor.

Even the encyclopædia reads thrillingly upon this subject and one can afford to quote it, with the feeling that the quotation will be read: "His house harboured Italian, German, French and English musicians. He haunted the green room of Palmer's Theatre, and painted gratuitously the portraits of many of the actors. He gave away his sketches and landscapes to any one who had taste or assurance enough to ask for them." This sounds royal and exciting.

After that Gainsborough went up to London with plenty of money and plenty of confidence and instead of six pounds a year for his house, he paid three hundred pounds, which suggests much more comfort.

There were two other great painters of the time in London, Sir Benjamin West--an American, by the way--and Sir Joshua Reynolds. West was court favourite, but Gainsborough too was called upon to paint royalty, and share West's honours. Reynolds was the favourite of the town, but he too had to divide honours with Gainsborough when the latter painted Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke and Sir William Blackstone.

Notwithstanding, his landscapes, for which he should have been most famous, did not sell. Everybody approved of them, but it is said they were returned to him till they "stood ranged in long lines from his hall to his painting room" Gainsborough was a member of the Royal Academy and also a true Bohemian. He cared little for elegant society, but made his friends among men of genius of all sorts. He was very handsome and impulsive, tall and fair, and generous in his ways; but he had much sorrow on account of one of his daughters, Mary, who married Fischer, a hautboy player, against her father's wishes. The girl became demented--at least she had spells of madness.

When Mary Gainsborough married, her father wrote the following letter to his sister, which shows that he was a man of tender feeling for those whom he truly loved:

" ... I had not the least suspicion of the attachment being so long and deeply seated; and as it was too late for me to alter anything without being the cause of total unhappiness on both sides, my consent ... I needs must give ... and accordingly they were married last Monday and settled for the present in a ready-furnished little house in Curzon Street, Mayfair ... I can't say I have any reason to doubt the man's honesty or goodness of heart, as I never heard anyone speak anything amiss of him, and as to his oddities and temper, she must learn to like them as she likes his person ... Peggy has been very unhappy about it, but I endeavour to comfort her." Peggy was his wife.

The abominable Fischer died twenty-years before Mary did--she lived to be an old, old woman.

Among those whom Gainsborough loved best was the man called Wiltshire who carried his pictures to and from London. He was a public "carrier" but would never take any money for his services to the artist, because he loved his work. All he asked was "a little picture"--and he got so many of these, given in purest affection, that he might have gone out of business as a carrier, had he chosen to sell them. Four of those little pictures are now very great ones worth thousands of pounds and known everywhere to fame. They are "The Parish Clerk," "Portrait of Quin," "A Landscape with Cattle," and "The Harvest Waggon."

We have a good many stories of Gainsborough's bad manners. The artists of his day tried to treat him with every consideration, but in return he treated them very badly, especially Sir Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds, who was then President of the Academy greatly admired Gainsborough but the latter would not return Sir Joshua's call, and when Reynolds asked him to paint his portrait for him, Gainsborough undertook it thanklessly. Sir Joshua left town for Bath for a time, and when he returned he tried to learn how soon the portrait would be finished, but Gainsborough would not even reply to his inquiry. There seems to have been no reason for this behaviour unless it was jealousy, but it made a most uncomfortable situation between fellow artists.