Landscape with Stream and Weir - YCBA Collections Search

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Thomas Gainsborough, 1727–1788, British, Landscape with Stream and Weir, between 1750 and 1753

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Creator:

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727–1788

Title:

Landscape with Stream and Weir

Former Title(s):

A River Landscape with a Weir, Sheep and Figures [1985, Cormack, YCBA Concise Catalogue]

Summer Cloud [1963, Painting in England 1700-1850, collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon, exhibition catalogue]

Date:

between 1750 and 1753

Medium:

Oil on canvas

Dimensions:

31 1/2 x 37 1/4 inches (80 x 94.6 cm), Frame: 41 × 46 1/2 × 4 5/8 inches (104.1 × 118.1 × 11.7 cm)

Credit Line:

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Copyright Status:

Public Domain

Accession Number:

B1977.14.57

Classification:

Paintings

Collection:

Paintings and Sculpture

Link to Frame:

B1977.14.57FR

Subject Terms:

Access:

Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details.

Link:

https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:406

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The young Thomas Gainsborough trained with Francis Hayman in London before returning to his native Suffolk in about 1748. In prosperous Ipswich he found a market for landscapes and small portraits (one of which is shown nearby). His earliest landscapes, of which this is an outstanding example, were derived from his careful observation of nature and heavily influenced by the Dutch tradition. The views themselves were almost always imaginary rather than representing particular places and were often painted as decorative overmantels. This picture was acquired by the London silversmith and art dealer Panton "Panny" Betew, a friend of William Hogarth. Betew made a habit of buying work by talented young artists and sold Gainsborough's drawings from the window of his London shop. It was engraved in 1764 before being cut down on the left-hand side, which has given the picture its current square shape.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

This charming view, with its generalized French rococo character, was clearly much influenced by Gainsborough's inspection of prints after Antoine Watteau. The ruined building, unusual for the artist's Ipswich paintings of this period, and the playful silhouette of feathery trees in the middle distance both owe much to the French court painter's influence. Meanwhile, Gainsborough (and other English rococo painters in search of ideas at this time) apparently borrowed the motif of the foreground figure-reclining on a tree trunk, with one leg outstretched and the other dangling-from a print after Watteau's Antoine de la Roque (ca. 1734).

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005

In a New Light: Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art (Yale University Art Gallery, 2023-03-24 - 2023-12-03) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Hogarth, Reynolds, Turner: British Painting and the Rise of Modernity (Fondazione Roma Museo - Palazzo Sciarra, 2014-04-14 - 2014-07-20) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Painting in England 1700-1850 - From The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (Yale University Art Gallery, 1965-04-15 - 1965-06-20) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

John Baskett, Painting in England: 1700-1850: the Collection of English paintings formed by Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon : on Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, until August 18th, , Connoisseur, Vol. 153, London, June 1963, pp. 101, 104, N1 C75 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 96-97, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Catherine M. Gordon, British paintings Hogarth to Turner, Frederick Warne, London, 1981, p. 24, ND466 G67 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Luke Herrmann, The Paul Mellon Collection at Burlington House, Connoisseur, vol. 157, December 1964, p. 218, N1 C75 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Painting in England : 1700-1850, Arts Review, vol. 37,, April 1963, p. 19, V 2337 [ORBIS]

Painting in England 1700-1850 : collection of Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon : Exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, , 1,2, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, 1963, p. 52 (v.1), no. 31, pl. 97, ND466 V57 v.1-2 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Painting in England 1700-1850 from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, The Royal Academy of Arts Winter Exhibition 1964-65., , Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK, 1964, p. 11 (v.1), front cover, no. 32, ND466 R68 1964/65 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Skira editore, Hogarth Reynolds Turner : British painting and the rise of modernity, Rome, 2014, pp.224, 263-64, cat. no. 74, fig. 74, ND466 .H65 2014 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Ellis Waterhouse, Gainsborough, Spring Books, London, 1966, p. 108, NJ18 G16 A12 W28 1966 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale University Art Gallery, Painting in England, 1700-1850, from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon : [exhibition at] Yale University Art Gallery, April 15-June 20, 1965, , vol. 1, W. Clowes and sons, New Haven, 1965, p. 23 (v.1), no. 81, ND466 Y35 (YCBA) [YCBA]

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