Thomas Gainsborough (1727 – 1788) Cottage Door with sh...

Hammer

£7,000

Thomas Gainsborough (1727 – 1788)
Cottage Door with shepherd and sheep
c. 1785
Inscribed bottom left with a stamp: T.Gainsborough 
Pen, ink and sepia wash with a stamped gold decorative border

This late drawing is unrecorded in the literature. It belongs to a group of drawings, first produced in the late 1770s, of female figures and children at a cottage door anticipating a male figure who is generally bringing them firewood. The drawing on offer is presented with a decorative border stamped in gold leaf that suggests it was one of the few drawings that left the artist’s studio—the artist probably gave it to a friend, a colleague or to curry favour with a patron. The sheet is similar in technique to a pair of drawings in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam that have similar decorative stamped gold leaf borders. The Rotterdam drawings use sepia ink and the bare paper to create the forms and they are brought into focus with minimal oily linear chalk marks. In this newly-discovered drawing this detail is especially evident in the steps leading to the cottage, in the trees and the sheep and figures.

Provenance:
Sabin Galleries, 4 Cork Street, W1

Property of a nobleman

Dimensions:
(Frame) 15.5 in. (H) x 18.5 in. (W)
(Paper) 9.5 in. (H) x 12 in. (W)