Abel is best remembered as a practitioner and composer of the viola de gamba (a bowed instrument similar to a cello). He was such a talented performer that after his death in 1787 The Morning Post reflected that the viola de gamba would 'probably die with him.' Through portraits, drawings and caricatures this exhibition explores the life and career of Abel and his close relationship with Thomas Gainsborough.
The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West, depicts Major-General James Wolfe's death in 1759 at the moment when Britain announced victory against the French in Quebec. The painting was so popular that William Woollett produced an engraving of it. Loyd Grossman, owner of plate, has generously allowed Gainsborough's House to print a limited edition...
28 February 2015 - 31 May 2015
The collection of Thomas Gainsborough drawings at Gainsborough’s House is one of the most comprehensive in the world. It includes examples from all stages of the artist’s career but also shows a broad range of subject-matter, including figure studies as well as landscapes and buildings
Samuel Palmer (1805– 81), painter and printmaker, is one of Britain’s greatest artists of the Romantic period. He is perhaps best known for his visionary paintings created during the time he lived in Shoreham, Kent, and his close friendship with the artist, printmaker and poet William Blake (1757–1827). This exhibition of Palmer’s complete etchings shows the playfulness, beauty and...
This exhibition in the Upper Bow Room features an extensive collection of drawings by Hubert-François Gravelot from the Gainsborough’s House permanent collection. The majority of these works were produced as designs for prints, book illustrations, decorative arts and other forms of material culture. Gravelot was a prolific draughtsman, who came to London from Paris in...
The renowned British artist Thomas Gainsborough, born in Sudbury in 1727, was deeply tied to the area of rural Suffolk in which he grew up. A new exhibition at Gainsborough’s House, entitled Gainsborough’s Sudbury, takes an in-depth look at the characters, buildings and natural features that shaped the formative years of Gainsborough’s childhood. Designed alongside...
The display of nine landscape paintings from the Dutch Golden Age at Gainsborough’s House is part of an international collaboration with Rijksmuseum Twenthe, a museum and gallery located in the textile city of Enschede in the Netherlands. This year, the Dutch museum shows Gainsborough in His Own Words, Holland’s first exhibition on Thomas Gainsborough, featuring a...
The art critic and author Andrew Lambirth bought his first painting as a student at Nottingham University in the late 1970s. Since then he has built up a collection of paintings, drawings and prints which focuses on the artists he has known and written about. Modern British art is his chief enthusiasm. As he says: ‘I still find it hard to believe...
Gainsborough’s House Print Workshop welcomes artists and students from all over Britain and Europe to work with expert and enthusiastic tutors. Our professional studio, one of the best facilities of its kind in the country, is proud of the quality of its summer programme and we are delighted that Dale Devereux Barker and Annabel Ridley...
This exhibition brings together over 40 drawings from public and private collections, many being on public display for the first time. French Drawings from the Time of Gainsborough covers the period between the Régence (1715 and 1723) and the Revolution (1789–99), when French drawing was the undisputed reference point for the quality and the teaching...
