It was in this context that our triumvirate appeared. Gainsborough is best
known for his high-society portraits, but he much preferred visiting “some
sweet village to paint landskips [sic] and enjoy the fag end of life in
quietness.” His countryside is, in the main, modest and naturalistic. Yet, Romantic
Landscape (1783) shows that, late in life, Gainsborough did flirt with
grander, more atmospheric scenes – here, of a shepherd and his sheep passing
through a vast, dramatically lit valley.
Born a generation after Gainsborough (and a year before Constable) in 1775,
the ever-ambitious Turner sought to prove landscape painting needn’t lack
the gravitas of history painting; in fact – in a Sublime fusion – it
actually could become history painting.
In 1800’s
Dolbadern Castle, the tale of the medieval Welsh prince,