UNIT 3
British Painting
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews (1750) is an oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough. The artist was in his early twenties when he painted this canvas, which combines the two genres in which he specialized – portraiture and landscape. By his own account, he preferred the latter.
The landscapes of Gainsborough are not rapid sketches from nature, he never painted out-of-doors: he painted his landscapes in his studio from his drawings and from memory when he returned from his walk or ride. He loved the countryside of his childhood and often said that it had made him a painter.
His portraits are painted in clear tones. The colour is always tender and soft. Light tone scheme and use of light blues and yellows belong to his earlier period. Later he tended to cool scheme and blues predominated in his paintings.
The twenty-two-year-old Robert Andrews married sixteen-year-old Frances Carter in November 1748 and Gainsborough made this portrait of them shortly after the wedding. The couple is shown in front of a stout oak tree – the husband standing and the wife sitting. A real, sprawling landscape stretches out behind them: everything here is unmistakably English.
Robert Andrews cradles his shotgun under his arm as his dog looks up at him. He stands proudly in the midst of his huge estate, which had just become even more extensive thanks to his marriage. His attitude is aloof yet businesslike. Frances Carter is sitting on a wooden Rococo bench. Her satin dress shows Gainsborough at his best, while it also reveals strong Rococo elements. The extent of Van Dyck’s continued influence on English portraiture can be seen through the capturing of fabrics in paint. The play of light, movement and the choice of the other colours make the light blue of the informal hunting dress spring to life. Her pose might have been lifted straight from a book of etiquette.
An area in the woman’s lap has been left unfinished for an unknown reason. Maybe it was reserved for a child’s portrait, or for a book, or even a dead game-bird. Our eyes are drawn from a fertile field with recently harvested golden sheaves of corn to meadows of grazing sheep, a stand of trees and the hills in the distance. The clouds touch the land at the horizon. The enclosure of the sheep was a recent development – livestock had previously wandered about freely and the neat parallel rows of corn produced by Jethro Tull's revolutionary and controversial seed drill show that this is a thoroughly modern and efficient farm. Andrew’s estate, Auberies, is sited in Bulmer Tye, North Essex, just a few miles across the county border from Gainsborough’s native county of Suffolk . The small tower in the left background of the piece is St. Peters Church in Sudbury. The church in the middle of the piece is that of All Saints, Little Cornard, very close to Gainsborough's hometown of Sudbury. The oak tree is still extant, though considerably larger.