Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Hilly Landscape with Cows on a Road
, Black chalk, stumped, heightened with white chalk, Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1910
, III, 62
This brilliant chalk landscape is typical of Gainsborough's work in the early 1780s, the majority of which consists of rapid sketches of imaginary compositions done mostly as recreation. His style became increasingly sketchy, brilliant, and forceful. The Morgan's collection of twenty-five drawings by Gainsborough is of high quality, mostly coming from the Fairfax Murray collection that Pierpont Morgan bought en bloc in 1910.