Pastoral Landscape

Attributed to Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)

This is painted in the style and technique of an early Gainsborough, although Gainsborough's signature is not shown. In the detailed structures in the background is a bluish pink effect that Gainsborough used on his early paintings.

Gainsborough received his early art training in London, working as an assistant to the engraver Hubert Gravelof, among others; and probably worked with Francis Hayman for a time, and certainly was much influenced by them in his development of an ornamental landscape style. The unreal artifice of French rococo style, however, was mitigated for Gainsborough by his study of Dutch 17th-century landscape.

This painting depicts riders on horseback with cattle and a cart in the foreground. There is a thatched roof cottage with laundry drying in the left center, mountains in the distance, trees in the center.