Wooded Landscape with a Herdsman Seated

This early landscape by Gainsborough was painted around the time that the artist returned to his hometown of Sudbury, following a period of training in London. It aptly demonstrates the strong influence of seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes on his work at this time. Simultaneously, it seems highly evocative of the countryside around Sudbury, in which Gainsborough spent his formative years as a boy. Placed prominently on the horizon is a church with a broach spire reminiscent of St Andrews, Great Cornard, not far from the Gainsborough family house. The meticulous attention to natural details – from individual blades of grass, to gnarled trunks of tress – demonstrates a deep-rooted understanding of the natural environment. Indeed, the depiction of a resting herdsman with his cattle reflects Gainsborough’s strong emotional connection to the rural inhabitants of Suffolk.