Der Wald von Cornard

Gainsborough is remembered for silky society portraits, but those came later, painted for money. This wood he did young, at about 21, back home in Sudbury in Suffolk, in 1748. He confirmed the date himself 40 years afterward in a letter, adding that selling the picture helped his father afford to send him to London to train. The scene is plain English countryside, a stand of trees, a pond, a man stooping to gather firewood, a track winding away toward a distant church. He studied it with the close attention he had picked up from the Dutch landscape pictures then filling English collections. He said its schoolboy style still secretly pleased him, because it showed how early his love of landscape had set. The picture is now in the National Gallery in London.