Coastal Landscape with a Shepherd and His Flock

Thomas Gainsborough, 1727–1788

between 1783 and 1784

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A pastoral landscape depicts a shepherd with his flock on a dirt path leading towards a body of water with a sailboat and a small boat. Rolling hills and trees frame the scene under a cloudy sky. Late in life, Thomas Gainsborough devoted increasing attention to landscapes, exploring a new departure in the form of seascapes and coastlines. These experiments, coupled with a second visit to Flanders in 1783, helped him develop a late style, an approach to painting that was highly picturesque in brushwork and subtle in coloring. This coastal landscape is characteristic of that style but is also unusual, as he combines a coastline with his more familiar fondness for the pastoral imagery of shepherds and their flocks. The silvery light and ethereal nature of the scenery consciously evoke old master painting and demand that we take