Thomas Gainsborough

Whilst a Face painter is harassed to death a drapery painter sits & earns 5 or 6 hundered a year & laughs all the while.

There is a branch of painting next in profit to Portrait and quite within your power without any more drawing them I'm answer for you having, which is Drapery & Land-skip.

I must own your calculations & comparisons betwixt our different professions to be just, provided you remember that in mine a Man may do great things and starve in a garret if he does not conquer his Passions.

I grow dauntless as I grow old, I believe any one that plods on in any one way, especially if that one way will bring him bread & cheese, will grow the same.

It is my strict charge that after my decease no plaster cast, model, or likeness whatever be permitted to be taken. - 'Tho. Gainsborough'.

We are all going to Heaven, and Vandyck is of the company.

We love a genius for what he leaves and mourn him for what he takes away.

Dear Jackson, - ..First and most unfortunately, I have been four times after Bach, and have never laid eyes on him.. ..but surely I shall catch Bach soon to get you an answer to your letter..

Fools talk of imitation and copying, all is imitation.

I wish you would recollect that Painting and Punctuality mix like Oil and Vinegar, and that Genius and regularity are utter Enemies.

to Joshua Kirby, Esq. - to be left at the Turk's Head, Gerrard Street, St. Ann's, London - Mr. President and Gentlemen, Directors of the Society of Artists of Great Britain. I thank ye for the honor done me in appointing me one of your …

I am much obliged to you for your last letter, and the lessons reed, before. I think I now begin to see a little into the nature of modulation and the introduction of flats and sharps ; and when we meet you shall hear me play extempore.. …

[I] Pray do you remember carrying me to a picture-dealer's somewhere by Hanover Square, [London], and my being struck with the leaving and touch of a little bit of tree[?]; the whole picture was not above 8 or 10 inches high and about a …

One part of a picture ought to be like the first part of a tune, that you guess what follows, and that makes the second part of the tune, and so I'm done..

Many a real genius is lost in the fictitious character of the Gentleman. I am the most inconsistent, changeable being so full of fits and starts.

..though I'm a rogue in talking upon Painting and love to seem to take things wrong I can be serious and honest upon any subject thoroughly pleasing to me.