Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ... clay model by Gainsborough, ) which, unfortunately met with a similar fate. Gainsborough would now and then mould the faces of his friends, in miniature, finding the material in the wax candles burning before him; the models were as perfect in their resemblance as bis portraits. It was not in Thicknesse's nature, however, to live long in peace with any man. For old associations' sake, Gainsborough suffered many annoyances which, to his proud spirit, were hard to bear. At length Thicknesse's conduct became intolerable, and Gainsborough determined to rid himself of such an incubus. A characteristic account of the breach between them is given by the Governor: "I cannot help relating a very singular and extraordinary circumstance, which arose between him, Mrs. Thicknesse, and myself; for though it is very painful for me to reflect on, and much more so to relate, it turned out fortunately for him, and thereby lessened my concern, as he certainly had never gone from Bath to London, had not this untoward circumstance arisen between us; and it is no less singular, that I, who had taken so much pains to remove him from Ipswich to Bath, should be the cause, twenty years afterwards, of driving him from thence He had asked me, when he first went to Bath, to give him the portrait of a little Spanish girl painted upon copper, with a guitar in her hand, and a feather in her hair, a picture now at his house in Pall-Mail, the study of which he has often told me, made him a portrait painter; and as he afterwards painted Mrs. Thicknesse's full length, before she was my wife, he rolled it up in a landscape of the same size, and of his own pencil, and sent it me to London by the waggon. I was much surprised at the first opening of it, to see the head of a large...