THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727--1788), the son of a clothier, was born at Sudbury, in Suffolk. He early showed taste for art, and would linger among the woods and streams round Sudbury to sketch. Nature was his model, and to this fact we owe the pictures which make him and Wilson the founders of our school of landscape painting. The details of this master's life are few and uneventful. When between fourteen and fifteen years of age, his father sent Thomas Gainsborough to London to study art. His first master was Gravelot, a French engraver of great ability, to whose teaching Gainsborough probably owed much. From him he passed to Hayman in the St. Martin's Lane Academy, a drawing school only. Gainsborough began as a portrait and landscape painter in Hatton Garden, but finding little patronage during four years of his sojourn there, returned to his native town, and presently married Margaret Burr, who had crossed his line of sight when he was sketching a wood. The lady's figure was added to the picture, and in due course became the wife of the artist. For a man so careless as Gainsborough, an early marriage was good, and we owe the preservation of many of his works to the thoughtfulness of his wife. Settling in Ipswich, he began to make a name. Philip Thicknesse, Governor of Landguard Fort, opposite Harwich, became his earliest patron, and officiously maintained a friendship which was often trying to the painter. Gainsborough, at his suggestion, painted a view of _Landguard Fort_ (the picture has perished), which attracted considerable attention. In 1760 he removed to Bath, and found a favourable field for portrait-painting, though landscape was not neglected. Fourteen years later Gainsborough, no longer an unknown artist, came to London and rented part of Schomberg House, Pall Mall. He was now regarded as the rival of Reynolds in portraiture, and of Wilson in landscape. Once, when Reynolds at an Academy Dinner proposed the health of his rival as "the greatest landscape painter of the day," Wilson, who was present, exclaimed, "Yes, and the greatest portrait painter, too." One of the original members of the Royal Academy, Gainsborough exhibited ninety pictures in the Gallery, but refused to contribute after 1783, because a portrait of his was not hung as he wished. A quick-tempered, impulsive man, he had many disputes with Reynolds, though none of them were of a very bitter kind. Gainsborough's _Blue Boy_ is commonly said to have been painted in spite against Reynolds, in order to disprove the President's statement that blue ought not to be used in masses. But there were other and worthier reasons for the production of this celebrated work, in respect to which Gainsborough followed his favourite Van Dyck in displaying "a large breadth of cool light supporting the flesh." It is pleasant to think of the kindly minded painter enjoying music with his friends; and, rewarding some of them more lavishly than wisely, he is said to have given _The Boy at the