The Market Cart

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The Market Cart
Thomas Gainsborough 002.jpg
Artist Thomas Gainsborough
Year1786
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions184 cm× 153 cm(72 in× 60 in)
Location National Gallery, London

The Market Cart is a 1786 oil on canvas painting by the British artist Thomas Gainsborough. It is one of his final landscapes, [1] painted about 18 months before his death [2] and is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London, to which it was presented by the British Institution's governors in 1830.

Description

The painting depicts a horse-drawn cart, with two girls sat aboard, travelling along a woodland path. It was first exhibited at Gainsborough's own home in Pall Mall in 1786. He would later add a figure of a woodman gathering bundles of wood in 1787. William Dutt, in a book published in 1901, claimed that this painting depicted Gainsborough Lane, which later gave its name to part of the South East Area, Ipswich. [3]

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References

  1. Jones, Jonathan. "Rural mystery: Thomas Gainsborough's The Market Cart". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 15 November 2022.
  2. "Catalogue entry". National Gallery.
  3. Dutt, William Alfred (1901). Highways and byways in East Anglia. London: Macmillan. Retrieved 5 October 2022.