1797
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Wooded Landscape with Cows beside a Pool, Figures and Cottage is a 1797 by Thomas Gainsborough, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows cows drinking from a pool in a green English wood. A woman and child stand beside a cottage. Trees frame the scene. Light filters through leaves. Gainsborough used new printmaking tricks after he died. His soft-ground etchings kept the fresh feel of his sketches. This work feels alive, not stiff. See how he mixes ink and water for soft edges? Look up Thomas Gainsborough (British, 1727–1788) next.
Gainsborough was one of the first English artists to attempt original work using the newly invented techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. His almost impressionistic handling of these new media was perfectly in keeping with his chalk, pencil, and washed sketches of the landscape. The freshness and vitality of Gainsborough’s original prints, all published posthumously, place them among the greatest of all original English landscape prints.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Thomas Gainsborough (; 14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English painter, draughtsman and printmaker who specialised in portrait and landscape painting.
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