ABSTRACT
To turn from Reynolds to Thomas Gainsborough is in every way refreshing; is to encounter an even finer artist and an infinitely more attractive man. The great world did Gainsborough no real harm because he directly alchemized it into art; it was, in fact, of service to him as the fittest object of his own patrician sensibility. Thus, caring nothing for the great world in the flesh, Gainsborough, on canvas, fulfilled for it, by means of the artist's sensibility, that aspiration it was powerless to fulfil for itself. The world is no doubt small and narrow and satin-lined, hovering somewhere outside reality; but the only final comment on it is one of thankfulness and praise. Meanwhile, having long shunned the theatre, the middle classes swarmed back into it, echoing with far deeper sincerity the moral demands of the great world.
