Home › G › Gainsborough (THOMAS an English portrait)

Gainsborough (THOMAS an English portrait)

THOMAS, an English portrait and landscape painter; born in Sudbury, Suffolk, England, in 1727.

He was sent to London at the age of 14, to study art under Gravelot, Frank Hayman, and in the St. Martin's Lane Academy. Returning to his native county about 1744, he established himself as a portrait painter at Ipswich. He was patronized by Sir Philip Thicknesse, the governor of Landguard Fort. Through the advice of his friend, he removed in 1760 to Bath. Here he won the public by his portrait of Earl Nugent; numerous commissions followed, and in 1761 he began to exhibit with the Society of Artists of Great Britain, a body which he continued to support till 1768, when he became a foundation member of the Royal Academy. In 1774, after a deadly quarrel with Thicknesse, he removed to London, and there prosecuted his art with splendid success, being in portraiture the only worthy rival of Reynolds, and in landscape of Wilson, Gains- National Gallery, London, by 14 works, including portraits of "Mrs. Siddons," of "Orpin the Parish Clerk," and of "Ralph Schomberg, M. P.," and "The Market Cart," and "The Watering- Place"; in the National Portrait Gallery, London, by five works; in the Dulwich Gallery by six works, and in the National Gallery of Scotland by the portrait of the "Hon. Mrs. Graham." One of his most celebrated portraits is that of Master Jonathan Buttal, known as "The Blue Boy," in the collection of the Duke of Westminster. He died in London, Aug. 2, 1788.

GALAPAGOS (gä-läpä-gōs) Spanish, "tortoises," a group of 13 islands of volcanic origin in the North Pacific Ocean, about 600 miles W. of the coast of Ecuador, to which they belong; area, 2,950 square miles. The most important are Albemarle, 60 miles long by 15 broad, and rising 4,700 feet above the sea; Indefatigable, Chatham, Charles, James, and Narborough. Many of the fauna and flora of the islands are peculiar to them, the most remarkable being a large lizard and the elephant tortoise.

GALASHIELS (gal-a-shēlz'), the chief seat in Scotland of the Scoth tweed manufacture. It occupies 2½ miles of the valley of the Gala, immediately above the junction of that river with the Tweed, 3312 miles S. S. E. of Edinburgh, and 4 W. N. W. of Melrose. Its tower, demolished about 1814, was occupied in the 15th century by the Douglases. As early as 1581 wool was here manufactured into cloth. The town has also the largest skinnery in Scotland. Pop. about 13,000.