Frank, lucid and modern, this is a fresh portrait of Thomas Gainsborough, the most sensuous artist of the eighteenth century.
James Hamilton is an art and cultural historian. His books include TURNER: A LIFE, shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and A STRANGE BUSINESS: MAKING ART AND MONEY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN, which in 2014 was named Art Book of the Year by the SUNDAY TIMES. Hamilton was until retirement in 2013 curator of art collections and projects in Portsmouth, Wakefield, Sheffield, Leeds and the University of Birmingham, where he is a Fellow of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts.
With great imaginative verve [Hamilton recreates] the social
atmosphere of the places where the artist and his family settled
... [Hamilton] is constantly fascinating about the paintings ...
His book is gorgeously illustrated and compulsively readable - the
pages seem to turn themselves. Almost as good as owning a
Gainsborough
*Sunday Times*
A shrewd and entertaining biography ... Hamilton's approach is
influenced by his perception that Gainsborough owed much to Hogarth
... This valuable insight informs both Hamilton's exploration of
Gainsborough's art and his thorough and imaginative interpretation
of the life ... Hamilton's book brings one of the very greatest
[artists] vividly to life
*Literary Review*
Colourful and thoughtful ... What Hamilton's vivid book makes clear
is just how lucky some of his sitters were; what they got for their
guineas was not simply a likeness of imperishable glamour, but the
company of a man who was every bit as lively and engaging as his
paintings
*The Times Book of the Week*
Although [Hamilton's] primary focus is the life rather than the
work ... the vivid descriptions of Gainsborough's studio practice
breathe an authentic whiff of turps and linseed oil into the story
... Highly readable and brilliantly reconstructed
*Daily Telegraph*
Hamilton is a first-rate art historian ... He gives us deft
explanations of mysterious artistic effects - Gainsborough's use of
ground glass in the medium, and how he might have learnt about it,
and what it does to the surface. But the question of money is
Hamilton's core expertise: how much Gainsborough earned and how
much of it went on necessary display, such as grand houses in Bath
and Pall Mall. And fascinating it is, too ... Gainsborough is one
of the most lovable of great artists, and his personality shines
through. This is an enjoyable biography by a writer who understands
him
*The Spectator*
[A] richly humane biography of the artist ... [An] astute yet
generous book
*Guardian*
[A] wonderful new biography ... Hamilton is fascinating on
Gainsborough's experimental and innovative technique, how he moved
from what he calls the 'dabbing' of the artist's early paintings,
with their more doll-like figures and outlines, to the
characteristic loose sweeps, the 'brushing' style of his later
work
*Financial Times*
James Hamilton's wholly absorbing biography is very different from
the usual kind of art historical study that often surrounds such a
major figure as Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88). Hamilton is
positively in love with his subject, and writes with verve and
enthusiasm, yet grounds it on vast research with primary and
secondary sources, all impeccably noted
*The Arts Desk*
Hamilton's Gainsborough is a 'Jack-the-Lad', a 'swigging, gigging,
kissing, drinking, fighting' good-time city boy in London and Bath
... [Hamilton] is strong both on the Gainsborough who is stirred by
harvest gleaners and woodland cottages, and the Gainsborough who
frets about his framing fees and boasts about the musical
instruments he has bought ... [The book] gallops along at
highwayman's pace
*Apollo Magazine*
Spendthrift, talking nineteen to the dozen, laddish, musical and
often resentful of the sitters that he had to paint in order to
earn a living ("confounded ugly creatures"), [Gainsborough] is
brought to lively and likeable life in Gainsborough: A Portrait by
James Hamilton. The painter was, Hamilton says, more serious about
his art than he let on, but it is those trace elements of his
personality that give his pictures their sparkle
*Sunday Times Art Books of the Year 2017*
This affectionate and intricately researched biography is a
memorable account of Gainsborough as 'one of the most joyous
eccentrics' of his time
*Daily Mail Must Reads*
Were Mr and Mrs Andrews complete pricks? In his delightfully racy
portrait of one of our most renowned British portraitists, the art
historian James Hamilton suggests that Thomas Gainsborough's
wedding picture of a pair of snooty Suffolk landowners is adorned
with more pictures of penises than the wall of a public loo. This
is just one of many new lights cast on Gainsborough, a "swigging,
gigging, kissing, drinking, fighting" Jack-the-lad who, with his
gift of the gab and his canny eye on the main chance, cavorts
through Georgian England
*The Times Art Books of the Year 2017*
This account of the Georgian portrait painter's life is set against
a backdrop of dirt and highwaymen and skeletons on gibbets on
Hounslow Heath. An 18th-century Scottish sex therapist even makes
an appearance. But for all the fun the author has with the
painter's penchant for drink and sex, the writing really takes off
when Hamilton engages with Gainsborough's paintings themselves in
all their swimmy, silken sheen
*Sunday Herald Books of the Year*
Glitters from beginning to end
*Catholic Herald Books of the Year*
A fine and empathetic portrait [of] a man who was as lively as his
brushwork
*RA Magazine*
[Gainsborough's] tetchiness animates this enjoyable biography,
which also shows how his techniques were ahead of their time
*Daily Telegraph*
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