[MUSIC] Thomas Gainsborough's The Cottage Door, here in San Marino, is one of several pictures that the artist painted on this theme towards the end of his career. It is the last of Gainsborough's pictures that we will study in our unit on painting the culture of sensibility. Today we'll consider how the representation of the rural poor and the theme of charity became part of the civic culture of the 18th century. Many of Gainsborough's works include references to labour and the working class. Reminding us that the program of painting for academic artists in the 18th century included a series of conventions around the representation of the poor, and in this case, that of impoverished mothers and their children. As Martin Postle has suggested, references to poverty were presented partly with the aim of eliciting sympathy from the viewer. But also to remind the public of it's own capacity for carrying out good works. In the later years of Gainsborough's career, he turned to painting the series collectively known as his Cottage Door series. These show country folk gathered around the open door of a cottage, usually in a clearing in the forest. Hugh Belsey tells us that the theme of the cottage door first appeared in Gainsborough's work in about 1770. As well as many paintings, there are also 18 published drawings on the theme. Many show a mother with a baby in her arms, sometimes accompanied by other women, who stand outside a primitive cottage, surrounded by other children, ranging in age. Sometimes a dog plays with the children, and in one, there are pigs feeding nearby. The feeling evoked by the pictures is of a happy, but not a prosperous rural life. These works extol the rural life as one of innocence and simplicity, while also drawing attention to the poverty that existed in the English countryside. Uvedale Price, the 18th century writer on aesthetics and landscape, noted that while Gainsborough became cranky and short tempered when painting portraits and dealing with his sitters, his mood was often more positive and upbeat when his task was to paint these landscapes. Price noted, when we have near to cottages and village scenes with groups of children and objects of real life that struck his fancy, I have observed his countenance take on expression of gentleness and complacency. Work such as the San Marino Cottage Door, here magnificently displayed, relates to a number of strands of the culture of sensibility. In addition to the theme of poverty and charity, if we consider the form through which the work is produced, that is the style of the composition, the palette and the lighting, we might conclude that an interest in sensation, so much part of the culture of sensibility, is here invoked. This image we could even call sensational. It is striking to the viewer for the theatrical devices that the artist has used to create effect might also be from a play at the theatre. The palette is high pitched and designed to draw the eye. The composition is enclosed as though it might be on a stage. Apart from Gainsborough's clear reference to formative theatricality, this work has significant content. The lesson of charity is here being suggested, as it is in a number of Gainsborough's paintings. Here the viewer may conclude that it is the responsibility of the well-to-do to feel sympathy for and to assist the poor, including and especially perhaps, mothers and their babes. Gainsborough's surpassingly beautiful Italianate picture of 1784, Charity Relieving Distress, clearly shows the lesson of charity. Gainsborough painted landscapes throughout his career. As Michael Rosenthal and others have pointed out, the naturalism for which Gainsborough was celebrated, clearly seen, for example, in the National Gallery of Victoria's A seapiece, a calm. Where the brush stroke was thought to be so scratchy, and the image so diffuse as to lead some contemporary observers to suggest that it was difficult to make out the subject of the work, gives way to an interest in returning to the history of painting, through emulating Flemish, Italian, and Spanish artists of the previous century, such as Rubens, Claude, Rosa, and Murillo. He was also clearly very fond of the naturalism of Dutch 17th century painting, and admired the work of Adriaen van Ostade, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Aelbert Cuyp for example. The pictures all show evidence of the rapid enclosure of common land as we frequently see in Gainsborough's landscapes. The poor being driven through a countryside with carts laden with their meagre possessions. Here Gainsborough, while interested in lessons from the history of art in the way he went about painting, was actually also concerned about the present, and the social reality of the English countryside at the actual moment when he was at work. Which he represented through what appeared to be very simple and common scenes. Ann Bermingham, in her introduction to Gainsborough's Cottage Door pictures, quotes Samuel Johnson, the great 18th century English writer, on the theme of sensibility. Dr. Johnson wrote, to him that feels it with great sensibility, a mind able to see common incidents in their real state is disposed by very common incidents to very serious contemplation. In valuing what is seemingly insignificant, sensibility set a store by things that seemed meaningless and was moved with profound feeling in the presence of the ordinary. Sensibility, Bermingham reminds us, was itself about an interest in and awareness to the feelings of others, and an ability to enter into them. The ability to feel with another. Gainsborough's cottage door pictures are indeed studies of the ordinary, but they are also very often about empathy. These pictures are predominantly about women and usually there is more than one figure. Though there may be only one, as in the works entitled Housemaid, and the very beautiful Girl with Pigs in the collection at Castle Howard. More commonly, Gainsborough represents a group made up of only women and children. And these sometimes range from youth to old age. Sometimes, there is a figure performing labour, such as a man returning to the cottage bearing a load of faggots, that complements the happy gathering. This is seen, for example, in the wooded landscapes in Tokyo and Cincinnati. None of he figures look out at the viewer, aware that they are the subject of the gaze. Life is too busy for that. Here in the Huntington Cottage Door, the family depicted consists of only a mother with her infant, surrounded by her older children. Their clothing is simple, if not ragged. One child eats soup or porridge from a bowl, while in other places his own within reach, asking to be given some too. The two other children look towards the child lucky enough to be in possession of the bowl containing the food. Susan Sloman and Ann Bermingham have pointed to the fact that the subject of many of the Cottage Door pictures is wet nursing itself. And that this very likely reflects Gainsborough's own concern for the care of mothers and their children, exemplified in his involvement with the London Foundling Hospital. While it has been suggested that the mother here bears a likeness to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the message of the painting is surely one to do with the hunger suffered by impoverished rural women and their children. Melinda McCurdy from the Huntington, however, has pointed out that the figures appear to relatively well fed and attractive. Gainsborough shows the rural poor in a palatable manner for his predominantly urban audiences. There are many references in the work of 18th century writers dealing with the culture of sensibility that refer to impoverished mothers and their children. Evan Smith himself noted that the labour of women included their roles as wives and mothers. And that no society can be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the members of poor are miserable. It was also the role of aristocratic and middle class women in particular to perform acts of charity. Jeremy Taylor urged, let the women of noble birth and great fortunes nurse their children, look to the affairs of the house, visit poor cottages and relieve their necessities. Barker-Benfield reminds us that Mary Wollstonecraft herself, when she was a governess in Ireland, visited the cabins of the poor. And that literary figures such as Hays' Emma Courtney demonstrated sensibility in the distribution of charity when it was accompanied by quote, kind accents, tender sympathy and wholesome counsels to the indigent but industrious cottages. Given the number of works that Gainsborough executed that included this theme, I think that we can conclude that he empathised with, and had a special interest in the fate of the rural working women and their children. As a man of sensibility, it was his duty to teach these sentiments to others. And therefore, incumbent upon him to represent these images and themes in his pictures in order to discharge his duties. What do you think? [MUSIC]
