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Article: All bravura, grace and sensuality; Haphazard it may be, but Tate Britain's Gainsborough exhibition reveals a great painter of European stature.
- Article from:
- The Evening Standard (London, England)
- Article date:
- October 25, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Solo Syndication Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: BRIAN SEWELL
IT is extraordinary that Thomas Gainsborough, born and long resident in Suffolk, the county of ugly women, should have developed such an eye for feminine beauty, grace and sensuality. The eye was not there at the beginning of his career: in his early portraits women were awkward, stiff-necked dolls with dresses too extravagant for their invariably rural settings, their plain little faces pallid, unless the subject was his wife - and to her he gave, though she was half Scottish, a Suffolk bumpkin's ruddiness. Beauty, it seems, was a lesson that had to be learned, grace too, and sensuality, before they could be applied to the portraiture that ...