River Landscape (1768-70) Thomas Gainsborough (1727 - 1788) Gainsborough — best known today for The Blue Boy — was a well-known and extremely successful Augustan portrait and landscape painter, the favorite painter of the British monarchy. While occasionally regarded as an early Romantic painter, his work, while sometimes departing from the conventions of his day, is generally much more reflective of Augustan sensibilities. In this picture, note the pastoral setting and the depiction of a nature that is ordered and calm; nature here serves as a place for human activity in controlled circumstances. The only animals are domestic ones (livestock and a dog), and the human activities bespeak calm and tranquility, an easy mastery of the natural world. info on The "Claude Glass" > < back       to Romantic art >