The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough by John HayesReview by: Winslow AmesThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Sep., 1972), pp. 360-361Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3049013 .

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360 THE ART BULLETIN

that are partially separated chronologically), Pommer does not view Vittone's development as categorically as Portoghesi and, in contrast to the treatment of Guarini's development in Chapter 2, he argues (page I 17ff.) that Vittone was equally able to work in a conservative vein of considerable variety (San Salvatore, Borgo Masino, 1755; Parish Church, Sant' Ambrogio di Torino, i757; Santa Maria dell'Assunta, Riva di Chieri, 1761; San Michele, Rivarolo Canavese, 1768; Sanctuary, Oropa, probably late I760's) and a freer more inventive manner both before and after these churches (Santa Maria dell'Assunta, Grignasco, 1751; San Michele, Borgo d'Ale 1770). Even within the conservative group Pommer sees "vast differences in style" (page 118) occurring within a few years (Borgomasino, 1755; Sant' Ambrogio di Torino, 1757). The emphasis on coexistent alternative stylistic possibilities should also help to reveal the nature and complexity of Vittone's intent and achievement. Pommer's pluralistic view of Vittone's work is paralleled by the general thesis of the book that "open architecture was neither a style nor a unified development. It had no single purpose."

The phrase "open structure," the general morphological theme of the book, was coined by Pommer to describe walls and vaults that are perforated, open, and in vertical structural elements, though not necessarily in vaults, tending toward skeletal frame- works. The elements that result in open structure are: open framework of columns; inner frame of piers or columns that open to an outer zone; great windows; galleries, coretti, and vaults per- forated and open (page 2). These elements are to be found, ac-

cording to the author, "in many European centers" (page 2). They are "at once remarkably international and yet local in character," but they appear "nowhere more vigorously or distinctively than in Piedmont" (page 2). The book is shaped by his view that open architecture in Italy began with Guarini in the seventeenth cen-

tury but became a "consistent trend only in the eighteenth with

Juvarra and his followers, such as Benedetto Alfieri and Vittone." Some of the elements of open structure loosely defined by Pom-

mer were recognized by scholars many years ago (e.g., A. E. Brinckmann, Die Baukunst des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts in den romani- schen landern, Wildpark-Potsdam, [19191], 217ff.), as characterizing one of the international stylistic qualities of one variety of rococo

space in the early decades of the eighteenth century throughout Europe. P. Frankl, in Die Entwicklungsphasen der neuren Baukunst, Berlin and Liepzig, 1914, (now Principles of Architectural History, trans. J. O'Gorman, Cambridge, Mass., 1968) independently recognized some of the features also and described them in his discussion of the third phase of spatial form in Section 4 entitled

"'unexpected vaults,' " and Sections 5, 6, 7, 8 (pages 66-70 of the English edition).

When discussed, the characteristics were seen to be unifying stylistic features, isolatable phenomena, even though the specific elements of the formal vocabulary might vary from region to re- gion. Subsequently, the existence of international stylistic simi- larities of this kind in the period were denied as well as any simila- rity of intent. (For a summary of the literature see H. Bauer and H. Sedlmayer, "Rococo," Encyclopaedia of World Art, xuii, New York [1966], cols. 230-74.) Pommer, while acknowledging different purposes in different countries, the lack of unified development, and the lack of a single style, yet states that "the phenomenon [of open architecture] was larger than any of its causes or meanings." He implies thereby that there was an attitude towards architecture shared (unconsciously?) by some individuals in a number of countries in Europe that resulted in a variety of manifestations which are related, albeit tenuously. Pommer's view of the artistic endeavor of architects and patrons in eighteenth-century Pied- mont and of their relations with their transalpine neighbors is inclusive and sophisticated. It may help to form both a more comprehensive and more detailed view of shared general attitudes towards architecture manifest in eighteenth-century Europe. Its principal value lies, however, in the new interpretations, analyses and documentation that have already significantly altered our knowledge of eighteenth-century Piedmontese architecture.

The book is difficult to use. Footnotes are at the end of chapters. The halftone plates (awkward format, poorly reproduced, with

portions of most illustrations - drawings, prints and photographs - inexplicably cut off at the edges) are gathered and sandwiched, amusingly, within Appendix xiii. Figures 67 and 68 are transposed. Figure og3 is upside-down and cut off. Figure i 15 should be re- versed to agree with section below. There are numerous typo- graphical errors. The contents of this book deserved more thoughtful design and production.

HENRY A. MILLON

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

JOHN HAYES, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough, 2 vols., London, Zwemmer; New Haven, Yale University Press, 1971. Vol. I, pp. x+353; vol. i, 462 pls. $50.

This solid work examines a delightful draftsman to whom one would not be very likely to apply the word solid. We cannot re- proach Gainsborough for not being a Tiepolo or even a Boucher; but as one of the few English artists who may plausibly be put in the company of those painters, Gainsborough manages to be light-handed without seeming really very Rococo. Indeed, there has almost always been something in "the Englishness of English Art" that brings a Gravelot to subtle changes in proportion or a Gericault to black-and-white. And a Gainsborough is more of the Louis XVI taste than the Louis XV, offering sentiment rather than playfulness, and certainly not enthusiasm.

John Hayes, director of the London Museum, declares himself reluctant to part with that "lovable person" Gainsborough; the artist does indeed emerge from personal quotations as a lovable person, the sound, amusing talker and sprightly musician who was also a first-class portrait painter. Yet from his drawings there also emerges an artist who, though deeply fond of Nature, was in no sense really a naturalist like Linnaeus or even Thomas Gray (Gray, to whom Gainsborough has often been compared, made serious studies in pen and ink of birds and insects in his copy of Linnaeus's System). Gainsborough was more committed to creating acceptable landskip from pastoral-poetic impulses than he was "involved" (as we might now say) or engage in "real" landscape. In other words, he was pre-Romantic.

This book is almost laboriously complete, but also perfectly just. Mr. Hayes likes but does not worship his subject, and he speaks of the "essential artificiality of Gainsborough's style" (page 51 ). The reviewer feels it might be fair to recall that an artifice is a product of art, a skillful contrivance, not necessarily bogus or false. Going through the plates, one thinks often of such favorite old- fashioned English sale-room phrases as "an effective sketch," "a clever drawing." And then suddenly one is staggered by a superb performance when Gainsborough really was engage, and not simply doing variations on dependable themes: such are plates 129 (Cat. No. 369), 120 (No. 346), 219 (No. 792), all landscapes; 71 (No. 872) and 99 (No. 874), dog and cats; 97 (No. 30) and 361 (No. 837), figure studies; I15 (No. 40), I 16 (No. 41), and 142 (No. 51), portraits.

An author who puts before us the extant genuine works of an artist has already made his value judgments and done his winnow- ing, so that he need not play the critic; but the reader cannot help seeing the wide range of quality in Gainsborough's draftsmanship, as for instance between plate io8 (No. 312), which seems to re- create a real experience, and plate io9 (No. 321), which does not. Still clearer perhaps is the contrast between plate 218 (No. 754), a brilliantly executed but rather empty convention, and plate 219 (No. 792) or plate 129 (No. 369), both of which transcend the un- inspiring cattle by their effulgence of sky and tree and water (the latter rather surprisingly because it is complex in technique, var- nished and large).

Mr. Hayes's text gets rapidly past the biographical sketch and an overview of the drawings, and comes to an excellent chapter, "Techniques and Methods of Work," which contains not only Edwards's well-known description of Gainsborough's "mopping" technique and reports from Reynolds and Ozias Humphrey, but also the fascinating letter published by Mary Woodall in 1961 describing Gainsborough's procedure for colored and varnished

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BOOK REVIEWS 361

drawings. Since the only other previous work of scope on the draw- ings is Miss Woodall's Landscape Drawings, 1939, the section on the portrait studies and their relation to paintings is notably welcome.

The chapter "Chronology and Stylistic Development" begins with a helpful list of dated or datable drawings; a supplementary list of others datable (within reasonable limits) by costume, or by relation to datable landscape paintings, is a defensible venture into further territory; here a footnote announces a forthcoming catalogue raisonnd of Gainsborough's landscape paintings, with variations from Miss Woodall's and Waterhouse's dating. This reviewer feels some small reservation about the dating by costume, to which he will turn below - not because he knows a great deal about historic costume but because he does not understand the author's differentiations between figures said to be drawn from life and others said to be from dolls or manikins.

Mr. Hayes does establish criteria of breadth for approximate dating of landscape drawings of the mid-i750's and thereafter, of rhythm for the late fifties and early sixties, of broken line and "scalloped" foliage for the sixties and later, of strong chiaroscuro or color-and-varnish in the seventies. One of his best finds is the roughly datable No. 378 (pl. 423), the first appearance of the "mopping" technique (done with small sponges held in tongs) which established masses and middle tones, later to be provided with more definite form in black and white chalk. He ends with a comparison of the vigorous landscape drawings of the artist's last years and the composition studies and figure drawings of similarly mature richness.

In "Subject Matter and Imagery" Hayes has little to work with that is not fairly obvious; the most interesting observations deal with literary influences or correspondences (Thomson, Goldsmith, Uvedale Price) and they include a quotation from an anonymous nineteenth-century writer: ". .. it was Gainsborough who really created the taste for the picturesque." Hayes himself says, "Senti- ment is never so overt as in the paintings [of the sixties]."

In the ten pages of "Formative Influences" and in the large body of "comparative illustrations" (pls. 237-462) lies the most useful work of all. Gainsborough's study with Gravelot and his reverence for the Ruisdaels and Waterloo are well known; here they are visually documented. Hayes attributes Gainsborough's adoption of white lead as heightening for drawings and watercolors to the in- fluence of Rubens (presumably of Rubens's oil sketches) and of Marco Ricci and Busiri; there are further influences from Dughet, Claude, Van Dyck, Berchem, Teniers, and (for the sentimental late beggar-boys) Murillo. The Teniers and Waterloo resemblances are remarkably plain, though this reviewer sees little real connection withJan Both (pl. 279). There is one fascinating triple comparison: Gainsborough, Waterloo, Paul Sandby (pls. 273-75). From plate 309 on, the comparative illustrations are devoted to Gains- borough's actual preparatory drawings and their consequent paintings. Here the preparatory work for the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland (pls. 337-39) and the three studies (pls. 343-45) for the unfinished Diana and Actaeon are particularly fine: they suggest that Gainsborough kept trying, and that as a malerisch draftsman he could have been even greater if he had chosen somewhat earlier in life to avoid the shortcuts offered by his own facility.

From plate 353 on, there are comparisons to Gainsborough Dupont and other emulators or imitators which are instructive, though the imitations are mighty dreary. Plates 385 and 386 com- pare a Constable pencil landscape to a "study of trees" by Gains- borough, and this is greatly to Constable's advantage so far as grasp of nature, degree of "commitment," and quality ofjust plain drawing are concerned; plate 389 is a sort of pseudo-Gainsborough in pencil and watercolor by Constable which is a poor Constable indeed, but which also is not a very good "Gainsborough"; this kind of comment without words is another useful feature of Hayes's work. The reviewer must add that Hayes's use of the word study is confusing: he means by it something drawn directly from nature which is not evidently a composition. The trouble is that Gainsborough hardly ever studied by means of drawing (Constable would do that); Gainsborough's study was not nature but landskip - landskip as it was desired by the taste of his time. Hayes rather sensibly calls a vast number of drawings simply landscape, and ex-

plains why he does so; in his text he more properly uses the name sketch for many of the drawings captioned study. Such "studies" as those of Glastonbury and Tintern Abbeys (pl. 177, No. 573, pl. 178, No. 575) are mere sketchy notes, and such a "study" as plate 82 (No. 249) is much more obviously invented and even fanciful than some of the compositions. The text refers to Gainsborough's use of lumps of coal and bits of broccoli as points of departure for land- scape invention, and the reviewer tends to suspect that some of the drawings called "a study from nature" or "study of rocks and plants" are indeed based on coal and broccoli (which are bits of nature, too).

By the same token, much seems to be debatable in Hayes's identifications of some of the figure drawings. The artist used articulated dolls as a way of learning to make drapery behave (that is study!). It is hard to discover the author's criteria: for example, plate 95 (No. 29) looks to this reviewer like a drawing from life; if, as Hayes says, it was drawn from a doll, how can plate 98 (No. 32) be from life? It looks to your reviewer like a doll, and an eigh- teenth-century doll unmistakably. Dolls, by the way, were pos- sibly allowed to keep the costumes in which they first appeared, hence the costumes went out-of-date; therefore dating by costume from a doll may be more uncertain than dating from costume worn by a live person.

To return to the imitators, Gainsborough Dupont and George Frost are given time and careful examination by Hayes because they do echo Gainsborough himself. You could throw your hat through most of Dupont's modelling; Frost was a little meatier, but after Hayes's comparisons he will hardly seem deceptive. Hoppner looks pretty silly compared to Gainsborough; Morland seems to have devoted himself to one of the fussier and more frequently imitated of Gainsborough's manners (pls. 424, 425), and rather surprisingly Dr. Thomas Munro comes off well, especially when he seems to mediate between Gainsborough and Cozens. Others in- clude Queen Charlotte and John Linnell.

A concluding chapter on owners and collectors, though it does not affect Gainsborough as we see him, is absorbing; most in- teresting is the recent appearance of French and German collec- tors.

Observable throughout the plates is the relatively lower quality of many of Gainsborough's drawings in wash or simple water- color in comparison to his work in dry media; it may be that this results from the fading in wet-media work, especially likely in the case of a draftsman so popular as Gainsborough has always been, and so likely therefore to have had his work framed and hung in the light. Indirect proof of this is offered by the greater brilliance of those drawings, wet, dry, or mixed, which Gainsborough var- nished (a rare well-preserved unvarnished example is plate 225, No. 8oo). The drawings over offsets seem particularly tenuous, and so do those compositions within pretty tooled borders, sometimes with the artist's name stamped; these may have been among the drawings sent by Gainsborough to a dealer in London for sale from his window.

These two volumes are easy to consult because all the plates are in their own binding; this raises the price, but it still works out at seventeen cents per full page of plates, and that is good as things stand now. It is also worth adding that anyone who is going to give Hayes's work a thorough reading should also have Waterhouse's Gainsborough of 1958 at hand.

This reviewer has not the sharp eye of the late Walter Vitzthum, and therefore has probably no business to raise doubt about any of the attributions, but he confesses to some trouble with plate 92 (No. 279) which, though it is apparently consistent with several other drawings, does not feel right; and to even more trouble with the costume sketch (pl. 259, No. 14) whose verso represents a bull- dog bitch (pl. 71, No. 872). The recto is confronted with a Parrocel costume sketch (Pietro Longhi also might have offered a good comparison), against which it looks shaky; the verso if compared to the signed studies of a cat (pl. 99, No. 874) looks more and more like French drawing.

Nevertheless, buy the book. Hayes gives good value. WINSLOW AMES

University of Rhode Island

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