"This [the early painting 'Cornard Wood', 1748] is one of the first pictures Mr. Gainsborough produced; he painted it at Sudbury in the year 1748, at which time he was a schoolboy.. ..he appears to have found a preferable school in sequestered nooks, woody uplands, retired cottages, the avenues of a forest, sheep, cattle, villagers, and woodmen. These were the true sources for the cultivation of a mind so strongly impregnated with the seeds of fine fancy attached to the wild beauties of nature; and whose inclination for landscape was drawn forth by these rustic objects rather than by the example of any master whatsoever.."