Thomas Gainsborough, 'Cornard Wood, near Sudbury, Suffolk', 1748

Cornard Wood, near Sudbury, Suffolk

Thomas Gainsborough

Not on display

About the work

Overview

Cornard Wood is on the outskirts of the village of Great Cornard, two miles from Sudbury, where Gainsborough was born. The view is taken from Abbas Hall, looking towards the village of Great Henny. The church of St Mary’s Great Henny appears in the background, our eyes led to it by the path winding through the wood.

Cornard Wood was common land, and villagers had ancient rights to gather wood, graze animals, dig marl for manure and sand for building materials, take the path to Great Henny, or just to stroll there. In Gainsborough’s painting we see many of these activities.

Gainsborough wrote that Cornard Wood was ‘actually painted at Sudbury, in the year 1748’, while he was still learning his craft. The picture belonged for some years to the uncle of the painter John Constable, who was born within ten miles of Gainsborough’s birthplace and was an admirer of his landscapes.

In-depth

Cornard Wood is on the outskirts of the village of Great Cornard, two miles from Sudbury, where Gainsborough was born. The view is taken from Abbas Hall, on a hillside above Great Cornard, looking south and slightly west to the village of Great Henny. The church of St Mary’s Great Henny appears in the background, our eyes led to it by the path winding through the wood. In reality, Great Henny is further away than it appears in Gainsborough’s painting, and its tower is slightly different.

The wood was common land, not private property, and villagers had ancient rights to gather wood, graze donkeys and horses, dig marl for manure and sand for building materials, take the path to Great Henny, or just go for a stroll there. In Gainsborough’s painting we see many of these activities: two donkeys stand on a hillock; a man, accompanied by a seated lady, rests from digging; another man cuts and ties firewood while travellers journey on foot and horseback towards Great Henny. The trees and common on the left are dappled with sunshine, whereas the two spring-fed ponds on the right are bathed in shade. The Prussian blue pigment in the sky has faded to grey.

Gainsborough began teaching himself to draw and paint by studying and copying landscapes by Dutch artists, particularly Wynants and Ruisdael. Dutch landscapes appealed to those who preferred pictures of recognisable reality rather than the ideal classical landscapes of artists such as Claude and Poussin. Gainsborough could have seen Dutch paintings in East Anglian collections and probably knew others through engravings. The countryside of East Anglia, with its river meadows, ponds and windmills, shares much in common with that of the Netherlands. Gainsborough may have recognised that he could paint and sell pictures of his native landscape to those who appreciated Dutch art. However, Cornard Wood has a dreamy quality that sets it apart from the very realistic ‘little Dutch landscapes’ Gainsborough studied in his youth.

In a letter dated 11 March 1788, Gainsborough wrote that Cornard Wood was ‘actually painted at Sudbury, in the year 1748’, while he was still learning his craft, and that its sale enabled his father to send him to London. He said that the painting’s ’schoolboy stile‘ secretly pleased him because it showed the strength of his lifelong commitment to landscape painting. He confessed that ’though there is very little idea of composition in the picture, the touch and closeness to nature [...] are equal to any of my later productions.‘ Gainsborough revealed that in the intervening 40 years, Cornard Wood had passed through the hands of 20 picture dealers and he had even bought the painting back once himself for 19 guineas.

Cornard Wood belonged for some years to the painter John Constable’s uncle, David Pike Watts. Constable was born within ten miles of Gainsborough’s birthplace, and was an admirer of his landscapes. It may have been Constable who recognised the scene as near Cornard and came up with the picture’s title. When Constable was painting near Woodbridge in Suffolk in 1800, he wrote: ’tis a most delightful country for a landscape painter, I fancy I see Gainsborough in every hedge and hollow tree.'

Want to find out more?

Delve deeper and explore the catalogue entry for this painting.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Cornard Wood, near Sudbury, Suffolk
Artist: Thomas Gainsborough
Artist dates: 1727 - 1788
Date made: 1748
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 122 × 155 cm
Acquisition credit: Bought (Lewis Fund), 1875
Inventory number: NG925
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 19th-century English Frame

Provenance

According to Gainsborough himself, the picture was painted in 1748 and sold soon after, passing through the hands of ‘twenty dealers’ (he himself once buying it back for 19 guineas), until sold by Richard Morrison, Greenwood’s, 8 March 1788 (78) for 75 guineas, bt Alderman John Boydell (d. 1804); his nephew, Josiah Boydell, by 1808 reported as hoping to sell the picture for 150 guineas; purchased (? from him) by David Pike Watts, and in his collection by 1814 (when exhibited BI), then by descent to his daughter Mary, m. 1811 Jesse Russell (later Watts-Russell), Ilam Hall, Staffordshire; Jesse Watts-Russell, executors’ sale, Christie’s 3 July 1875 (32, as ‘A wood scene, with figures; a view near the village of Cornard in Suffolk’), 1150 guineas, bt Sir Frederic Burton, Director of the National Gallery, out of the Lewis Fund for the National Gallery 1875.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Judy Egerton, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The British Paintings’, London 2000; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2021

The Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings

York Art Gallery

1 October 2021 - 13 February 2022

National Gallery of Ireland

5 March 2022 - 12 June 2022

Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery

2 July 2022 - 13 November 2022
2024

Discover Constable and The Hay Wain

The National Gallery (London)

17 October 2024 - 2 February 2025

Bibliography

1856

G.W. Fulcher, Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A., London 1856
1915

W.T. Whitley, Thomas Gainsborough, London 1915
1934

R. Fry, Reflections on British Painting, London 1934
1935

M. Woodall, 'A Note on Gainsborough and Ruisdael', The Burlington Magazine, LXVI, 1935, pp. 40-5
1939

M. Woodall, Gainsborough's Landscape Drawings, London 1939
1946

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: British School, London 1946
1953

E.K. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain 1530-1790, London 1953
1955

H.V.S. Ogden and M.S. Ogden, English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeeth Century, Ann Arbor 1955
1959

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: British School, 2nd edn (revised), London 1959
1976

H. Potterton, Reynolds and Gainsborough, Themes and Painters in the National Gallery 2, London 1976
1982

J.T. Hayes, The Landscape Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough: A Critical Text and Catalogue Raisonné, Ithaca 1982
1985

M. Rosenthal, 'The Landscape Moralised in Mid Eighteenth Century Britain', Australian Journal of Art, IV, 1985, pp. 36-49
1988

A. Moore, Dutch and Flemish Painting in Norfolk: A History of Taste and Influence, Fashion and Collecting (exh. cat. Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, 10 September - 20 November 1988), London 1988
1990

M. Cormack, 'An Early Landscape by Gainsborough for Gainsborough's House', Gainsborough's House Society Annual Report, 1990, pp. 30-7
1991

M. Cormack, The Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough, Cambridge 1991
1991

E.J. Walford, Jacob van Ruisdael, New Haven 1991
1997

M. Rosenthal (ed.), Prospects for the Nation: Recent Essays in British Landscape, 1750 1880, New Haven 1997
1997

A. Asfour, P. Williamson and G. Jackson, '"A Second Sentimental Journey": Gainsborough Abroad', Apollo, CXLVI, 1997, pp. 27-30
1997

S. Foister, 'Young Gainsborough and the English Taste for Dutch Landscape', Apollo, CXLVI/426, 1997, pp. 3-11
1998

J. Egerton, The British School, London 1998
2000

Egerton, Judy, National Gallery Catalogues: The British Paintings, revised edn, London 2000
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001

Frame

This frame is probably a replica of an eighteenth-century English frame. Oil-gilded, it is constructed from pine. The back edge showcases a stylised semi-flower and leaf motif, the corner cartouches are adorned with flower heads, and the centre cartouches feature a shell motif surrounded by flowers and foliage. The playful, swept outline is stepped and sweeps into scrolls with pierced centres. Raking gadroons are positioned before a sanded flat. The sight moulding is embellished with an acanthus-leaf-and-shell motif. The painting was reframed after 1935 and its English Rococo style is consistent with the original frames often found on Gainsborough’s earlier works.

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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