The Market Cart

By 1786 Gainsborough was the most sought-after portrait painter in Britain, but portraits were the work he did for money. Landscape was what he loved, and this is one of the last he finished, two years before his death. A cart piled with country people and produce comes down a wooded lane in the failing evening light, the great trees arching overhead. There is no particular place and no particular event. He built the scene in the studio from memory and feeling rather than from a real spot, and a boy gathering sticks at the lower left was added a little later. Gainsborough is said to have kept small models of moss, coal and broccoli on his table to compose wooded landscapes like this one.