Thomas Gainsborough was ten years older than Rokotov. He was born in 1727 in the charming corner of East Anglia, Sudbury in Suffolk. Tom was the ninth child in the family of a cloth merchant, the genus of which belonged to the native inhabitants of the town. From her mother, who wrote flowers pretty well, Tom inherited a talent for drawing. During his school years, the boy ran into the picturesque surroundings of the town to capture the magnificent green of the meadows, the quiet bend of the river, the lonely trees. It is noteworthy that Gainsborough himself considered himself a landscape painter. At thirteen, he moved to London, where he first found himself in a silversmith’s workshop. Here the teenager became interested in modeling. Continue reading →