GEYNSBORO Automatic translate

November 25, 2019 - February 9, 2020

Curator: Anna Poznanskaya, chief curator of the art department of the countries of Europe and America of the XIX – XX centuries.

Exhibition of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) in the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin continues the cycle of expositions devoted to British art. The Pushkin Museum has already shown exhibitions dedicated to W. Turner (2008), W. Blake (2010), Pre-Raphaelites (2013), Aubrey Beardsley (2014). All these exhibitions have enjoyed continued success with the public.

Gainsborough exhibition will allow you to get acquainted with the work of one of the founders of the British school of the XVIII century, the most striking and peculiar representative of the era, which is called the "Golden Age of British Painting."

Thomas Gainsborough is known as a brilliant portrait painter, successor to the great Van Dyck traditions and favorite artist of King George III and his family. Having carefully studied the traditions of Baroque and Rococo art, Gainsborough was well acquainted with the works of great old masters - Peter Paul Rubens, Antoine Watteau and his school.

Gainsborough was also one of the first British painters to appreciate the inexhaustible possibilities of the landscape genre. His works, created over four decades, demonstrate the master’s fascination with the works of Jacob Reisdahl, 17th-century Dutch painting and canvases by French landscape painter Claude Lorrain.

Gaining the artistic experience of his great predecessors, Gainsborough, who never left the borders of his country, managed to form his own style, which formed the basis for the further development of the British school.

Gainsborough’s creative heritage is unique not only because of its artistic qualities, but also by the relatively small number of paintings preserved in European collections. An unprecedented exhibition in the Pushkin Museum will collect paintings, created in different periods, the artist’s original graphics and exclusive archival materials. Among the unique exhibits from Britain are landscapes on glass, which are almost never issued at foreign exhibitions.

An exhibition of this scale would not have been possible without the participation of the largest museum collections in Great Britain.

Their participation in the project was confirmed by the London National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the London Royal Academy of Arts, the National Gallery in Edinburgh, the Artist’s House Museum in Sudbury, the Bath Museum of Art, etc.

The work of Thomas Gainsborough is impossible to imagine outside the context of his teachers - old European masters. The exhibition will feature works by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Reisdal, Antoine Watteau from Russian and foreign collections.