Wooded Landscape with Gipsies round a Camp Fire. by Thomas Gainsborough, 1727-1788

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727-1788
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Wooded Landscape with Gipsies round a Camp Fire.

Original etching with engraving. 1754-59. With the lettering 'Painted & Etch'd by T.Gainsborough - The Gipsies - Engraved and finished by J.Wood. Published by J.Wood. 1759'. Very rare first issue impression of 1759, before the re-issue by Boydell in 1764 and before Boydell's publication line.
Ref:Hayes - Gainsborough as printmaker no 2 (ii of iii)

Very fine strong impression without any plate wear. On medium weight laid 18th century paper. Generally very fine condition for this print; the print surface excellent (except for one 1 1/2 inch repaired tear mid right edge); the margins with some small repaired edge tears and handling. Previously partially laid-down; now expertly removed. Trimmed just inside platemark;sheet:19 3/8x173/8in

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Gainsborough was one of the greatest and most innovative British painters of the eighteenth century. His public reputation was founded on his magnificent portrait compositions but throughout his work, and often in the background of the portraits, runs the theme of his passion for landscape. In his approach to landscape within the romantic ethos of the late eighteenth century there is also a quality of realism, an expression of emotional involvement, which anticipates the great artistic revolutions of the nineteenth century.

Along with this personal commitment to landscape art Gainsborough was also one of the greatest and founding figures in the birth of a truly creative and 'painterly' approach to printmaking as an artistic medium in Britain. Hogarth, for example, had seen his prints as individual works of art but also as a way of promulgating the ideas and images of his paintings. Along with Paul Sandby, Thomas Gainsborough treated his prints as total works of art; enjoying and exploiting the inherent qualities of aquatint, softground and pure etching to create a new and personal language of artistic expression.

Gainsborough's earliest prints, drawn in the 1750's, were executed in pure etching, as is seen in Wooded Landscape with Gipsies but by the 1770's he had turned to using the textures and tones of softground linked to washes in aquatint (as in Wooded Landscape with a Country Cart and Figures). Despite his pleasure and inspiration in the print media he had little success in selling his pnnts, even when sold by the professional publisher Boydell they found little public recognition. As a result the editions were very restricted and examples have become extremely rare today.

The Gipsies, as this composition is usually known, dates from Gainsborough's early period in Suffolk. He started the print working in pure etching, however, it remained incomplete and no impression of the pure etched state has been seen since 1862. Gainsborough asked Joseph Wood, a professional engraver who had also worked with him on Wooded Landscape with a Church - his first print - to help him complete it. Comparatively little work seems to have been done on the plate by Wood; there was some strengthening to the sky and possibly the addition of some trees on the right.

Gainsborough issued just a few impressions of The Gipsies in 1759, with Wood's publication line. These are amongst the only prints by him to be issued in his lifetime and examples from this first issue, as here, are extremely rare. The plate was then re-issued by Boydell in 1764, with his publication line.