"If you paint for the connoisseurs, never attempt at simple elegance, picturesque ideas of nature, brilliancy of colouring, or taste in the grouping of your figures. Leave all this nonsense to the man in Pall Mall [where Gainsborough lived], who is so cursedly obstinate that instead of seeking for a manner in the Old School and giving you Athenian Temples and Roman Ruins in English Landscape, he fills his canvas with unthatched cottages and their barelegged inhabitants. This is vulgar nature - pray avoid it."
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Quote, c. 1780; from the article 'Hints to Professors of Landscape Painting', in the Morning Post, (perhaps by John Hoppner); as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 357
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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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