To celebrate the inaugural Sudbury Silk Festival (7 September 2019), Gainsborough’s House is proud to display four ensembles by the iconic British fashion designer and activist Vivienne Westwood. Ranging from the last two decades, they show how Vivienne has repeatedly taken inspiration from historic dress, particularly that of the eighteenth century. Vivienne first became known...
Suffolk and Flanders are not far apart as the crow flies. There have been connections between them for centuries, ever since Flemish merchants came to Suffolk to buy the coveted wool of Suffolk sheep for Flemish weavers to turn into high-quality cloth. By Gainsborough’s day, in both England and Flanders, new manufacturing processes are already...
Unknown Artist after Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). Ignatius Sancho, c. 1802-20. Gainsborough’s House and National Portrait Gallery. Entrance is included in price of House admission. In 1768 Thomas Gainsborough painted the portrait of Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729-1780), who was then valet to the Duke of Montagu. The portrait of Sancho is a rare depiction of a black man in...
Paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture and mixed media pieces produced over the course of the redevelopment project, Reviving an Artist’s Birthplace, by Artist in Residence, Anna Hennings. The art she exhibits carefully intertwines the story of the House's renovations with her numerous arts projects from across the region. It expresses an awareness of our relationship to...
Masterpieces on loan from the Woburn Abbey Collection by artists including Thomas Gainsborough, Claude Lorrain, Aelbert Cuyp, David Teniers the Younger, Sir Edwin Landseer and Richard Parkes Bonington. "This exhibition explores the origins of Gainsborough’s landscape art through the examples of Dutch and Flemish seventeenth century paintings in the Woburn Abbey collection collected by the...
Colourful lithographs by artists including Dia al-Azzawi, David Bowie, Uzo Egonu, Tracey Emin, Terry Frost, Alexis Hunter and Paula Rego. Striking Editions celebrates the art of lithography through a diverse body of artists working in the second half of the twentieth century. Both figurative and abstract, these striking images reflect a vibrant period of experimentation...
ORIGINS spans six decades of Hambling’s work, bearing witness to the artist’s deep connection with Suffolk and inviting a meditation on the universal relationships between self and environment, people and place. Comprised of around 30 works, the paintings and drawings in ORIGINS express a combination of exterior reality and interior life. Portrayals of people and...
This exhibition is drawn from the large collection at Gainsborough’s House of over 200 paintings, prints, drawings and manuscripts by Suffolk-born Henry William Bunbury, one of the most popular amateur artists of the late-eighteenth century, best known for his lively satires and caricatures of Georgian society.
Educated at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, Cooper achieved early success in the art world. In 1935, 19-year-old Cooper was exhibiting her work in West End galleries and being singled out by critics as an ‘outstanding’ young artist. Her career was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, followed by marriage and...
The first solo museum show in the UK dedicated to the work of the British abstract artist Rebecca Salter, President of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and by association, President of Gainsborough’s House. Having formally studied traditional Japanese woodblock printing in Kyoto for six years, Rebecca Salter, the first woman President of the...
The first solo museum show in the UK dedicated to the work of the British abstract artist Rebecca Salter, President of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and by association, President of Gainsborough’s House. Having formally studied traditional Japanese woodblock printing in Kyoto for six years, Rebecca Salter, the first woman President of the...
James Gillray (1756–1815) was Georgian Britain’s funniest, most inventive and most celebrated graphic satirist. His work transcends his own time and has continued to influence his successors of the modern age, from David Low to Martin Rowson. Tim Clayton, author of 2022’s definitive biography of James Gillray, brings the master satirist to life in an...
