GAINSBOROUGH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 538, 14 October 1949, Page 13

GAINSBOROUGH

GAINSBOROUGH, by Mary Woodall; British Painters Series, Phoenix. House. English price, 16/-. IVING in ah over-mechanised age, it is impossible for us not to have at times a nostalgic longing for the England that existed before the industrial age. And we must. sometimes feel that an essential part of the English tradition found its truest and most poignant expression in the work of some of the poets and painters who lived just at the time when the cloud of industrialism was fabout to obscure the sun. Wordsworth is not the greatest of English poets, but he is one of the most indispensable. Thomas Gainsborough, who was born forty-three years before Wordsworth, painted many pictures that seem to have a close affinity with his poetry. Although there is much in: the artist that is not to be found in the poet, Gainsborough’s paintings of cottage girls, and many of his landscapes, have the same simple lyricism as Wordsworth’s poems about country people and places. And so we may say also of Gainsborough that, although he is not the greatest of English painters, his romantic feeling for Nature, and for the simplicities of rural life, make him just as indispensable as Wordsworth. Technically, he is most interesting. He is one of the few Western painters to exploit fully the possibilities of line and texture; at times he attains (continued on next page)

BOOKS

(continued from previous page) a degree of subtlety that is found as a rule only in the work of the Chinese. This latest addition to the British Painters Series maintains the high standard already set. Phoenix House is doing a service to the English tradition in bringing out this excellent range of books on the great painters. It will be as useful in the classroom as in the private living-room, Dr. Mary Woodall, who writes the text for this volume, is probably the leading authority on Gainsborough, and her essay is all ‘that one could wish for.

A.R.D.

F.