"I had the honour to be acquainted with that truly British genius at Bath, and have more than once sat by him of an evening and seen him make models - or rather thoughts - for landscape scenery on a little oldfashioned folding oak table, which stood under his kitchen dresser, such an one as I have often seen by the fireplace of a little clean, country ale-house. This table, held sacred for the purpose, he would order to be brought to his parlour, and thereon compose his designs. He would place cork or coal for his foregrounds; make middle grounds of sand and clay, bushes of mosses and lichens, and set up distant woods of broccoli."
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This "Amateur of Painting" gave an interesting glimpse of Gainsborough amusing himself with his model landscapes. The old amateur tried to help Dubourg, long an ingenious maker of cork models; in his letter he referred to the adaptability of cork, and declared that Gainsborough often used it in his table models
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Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough (baptised 14 May 1727 - 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.
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