COVE

Seashore With Fishermen is a painting done by Thomas Gainsborough using oil on canvas. It was painted between 1781 and 1782. Thomas Gainsborough was born on May 14^th, 1727 in Sudbury, England. His style was of both Rococo and Romanticism. He mainly worked on Portraits and landscapes. The Art Story says this of Gainsborough: “Thomas Gainsborough achieved name and fame as the best-known English artist of the 18th century for his outstanding innovations and techniques in both landscape and portraiture. Having been introduced to the Rococo style of art in the early part of his career, Gainsborough's works echoed luxury and leisure of aristocratic society through contemporary fashion. But his most influential works were ones of idealized pastoral life in the rural countryside, which would be taken further by the modern artists of Romanticism” (1). His painting grew to be very influential on Romantic artists later on, and were inspirational for many later landscape artists and portrait makers. He was described as one of the eminent British painters of the time, and several prominent critics have “identified him as one of the artists who laid foundation for the early modernist movement of Impressionism” (Art Story, 1).

            Seashore With Fisherman was one of the paintings that Gainsborough did in the height of his career. Gainsborough’s landscapes were “highly personal statements that evolved from ideas and images he developed in his studio” (Useum, 1). He saw himself in many of his own paintings, and would often draw from his own life. This particular painting was an example of the struggles that he and others in his life had. “In this work he focused on the physical exertions of fishermen as they confront strong winds and pounding surf. Even the massive cliff on the far side of the cove, its thrusting diagonal posed against the wind, seems to echo the efforts of the men struggling to launch their boat into the waves” (1). The struggles of the fishermen in this work were most likely a metaphor for the many struggles that he had in his own work and also while growing up. This particular scene of struggle was described in British Paintings of the Sixteenth Through Nineteenth Centuries as “a turbulent one, but the forces thrusting in opposite directions are held in perfect balance. The squall and storm clouds are characteristic of such Dutch marine painters as Backhuyzen, one of whose sea pieces Gainsborough bought later in 1781; and the rock forms that compose the artificial cliffs and are used to powerful and monumental effect were a recurrent motif in Gainsborough's style of the 1780’s” (111). There were originally two versions of this painting, with the second building on the efforts of the first. “In the finished picture the composition is reversed, an extra figure is helping to push out the boat, the two fishermen with the net are differently arranged, and another figure is added; the two figures and an anchor on the left of the drawing were at first included, the figures seated facing each other, but were replaced in the course of painting by a large rock” (111).

Overall, this and other paintings by Thomas Gainsborough were very influential for various Romantic artists. His innovations on landscaping and portraiture were felt throughout this period of time.

Works Cited

“Gainsborough Paintings, Bio, Ideas.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/gainsborough-thomas/.