1727–1788

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, and trained in London. He worked in Ipswich and then Bath, where he built a fashionable portrait practice, before moving to London in 1774. A founding member of the Royal Academy, he rivaled Joshua Reynolds as the leading British portraitist. He preferred landscape, and his feathery, fluent brushwork set his portraits apart, as in The Blue Boy. He died in London in 1788.