Open Landscape with Drover and Packhorses

The Morgan's renowned collection of drawings by British artists includes twenty-five sheets by Thomas Gainsborough, whose rural scenes transformed the genre of landscape drawing and painting during the second half of the eighteenth century. This sheet, exceptional for its focused, vertical composition and execution in washes and opaque watercolor on brown paper, enriches our representation of the artist's work during the 1760s when he was based in Bath. It bears a gold stamp of the artist's initials which identify the sheets he considered finished works of art. These sheets show an assurance and finish that provide a bedrock of his reputation as one of the most accomplished draughtsman of the eighteenth century.