Rocky Pool and Landscape

Rather than records of specific places, Gainsborough’s landscapes feature a recurring stock of motifs. He uses cows, woodland pools, and rustic figures to explore a range of associations and visual effects. Here, he creates a mood of quiet stillness with two colors of chalk employed in various ways. The bright sunlight in the distant valley is an explosion of white where the blended chalk seeps across the sheet. Nearer the trees and rocks, the chalk appears as flickering touches. Gainsborough has used the color of the paper, originally blue but now discolored, as a ground tone for the drawing, letting it show through in areas such as the sky (2022).