Cottage Door

Maker Thomas Gainsborough (British, 1727-1788)

Collections

British Painting Highlights

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Dateca. 1780

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 58 1/4 × 47 1/4 in. (148 × 120 cm.) frame: 71 × 59 3/4 × 7 1/8 in. (180.3 × 151.8 × 18.1 cm.)

DescriptionIn the right center foreground, a woman holding an infant, with five young children about her, stands before the open door of a cottage overhung by trees. In the left foreground, a torrent, over which a wooden bridge leads, left, to a middle distance of fields and willows. A stricken tree and coltsfoot in the right foreground. Clouded blue sky at top, with rosy clouds over the horizon on the left.

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Status

On view

Label TextA mother and her children are nestled beneath overhanging trees in a genteel fantasy of rural living. This painting represents Gainsborough’s imaginative ideal of a simpler way of life. The artist’s periodic visits to the English countryside inspired several renditions of this theme, all of which document Gainsborough’s conception of the countryside as
an idyllic place evoking a sense of tranquility and simplicity, where life could be enjoyed fully. It was after the artist moved from Bath to London—when his distance from the countryside was greatest and the pressure to produce portraits became most intense—
that Gainsborough became deeply engaged in this theme as a way to express the pleasurable sensations that he associated with rural life and domesticity.

Bibliography

British paintings at the Huntington

Object number22.3