In the footsteps of Gainsborough

There are many reasons why Sudbury's Common Lands are special: the habitat they provide for wildlife; the wide-open space the meadows offer for walking and contemplation; the protection they give to the town by holding floodwaters during the winter months.

Add to this list the unique heritage of our riverside pastures. They are the longest continually grazed meadows in East Anglia and among the oldest in the country, records dating back more than 800 years. For much of this time, the Freemen of Sudbury have had grazing rights over parts of the meadows, including the family of 18th century painter Thomas Gainsborough, the town’s most famous son.

Stand at the Mill Hotel and look out across the meadows and, except for the odd building and the Centenary Pollards, the scene laid out before you has been mostly unchanged for centuries, certainly since young Thomas was taking in the environs of Sudbury during the reign of George II.

Collaboration

This connection between the artist and the landscape of his childhood was the starting point of an exciting new collaboration between Gainsborough’s House and the Sudbury Common Lands Charity. This partnership has seen scores of primary school pupils spending a day between the gallery and the meadows during June and July.

Around 140 children from Woodhall and St Gregory primary schools enjoyed a morning looking and learning about Gainsborough’s landscape paintings through drawing and art restoring activities,  before venturing out into those landscapes to sketch and practise using perspective and other artistic techniques. Additional sessions encouraged the youngsters to look closely at nature and describe plants found on the meadows. Pond dipping was also on the menu: the tiny creatures, including water boatmen, ramshorn snails and dragonfly nymphs, were scooped out in nets and placed in observation bowls for closer examination.

This fun but important pilot project was made possible with funding from the Arts & Culture grant-making programme through Suffolk Community Foundation and the Sudbury Freemen’s Trust, as well as a generous locality grant from Cllr Tim Regester. A big thank you for their support. Staff, trustees and volunteers from both Gainsborough’s House and the Sudbury Common Lands Charity were on hand to deliver the interactive lessons. These first sessions have been a great success, so there is hope they will become a regular learning experience.

Thomas Gainsborough

How wonderful it is for the young people of our town to be able to walk in the footsteps of Thomas Gainsborough who knew and loved the landscape around Sudbury, growing up in Sepulchre Street – now Gainsborough St - moments from the Stour and the Freemen’s meadows.

According to Sandra Nacmanson, whose excellent article can be found on the Sudbury Freemen’s website, young Thomas roamed the meadows and woods sketching when he should have been at school. His talents led him to London as a teenager but he returned to Sudbury to live in Friars Street on the north corner of Bullocks Lane, where he remained for some years living a stone’s throw from the meadows of his youth.

Sandra tells us that in 2017, 26 drawings in The Royal Collection, previously attributed to another painter, Edwin Landseer, were discovered to be by Gainsborough. All the sketches are considered to be depictions of landscapes around Sudbury. One drawing, in particular relates exactly to his painting of Cornard Wood. In a letter, Gainsborough wrote: “It is in some respects a little in the schoolboy stile but I do not reflect on this without secret gratification, for as an early instance, how strong my inclination stood for Landskip, this picture was actually painted at Sudbury in the year 1748”.

Sandra goes on: “Gainsborough is best known for portraits - ‘the curs’d face business’ - which earned him a living, but landscape was his love. Gainsborough’s friend and biographer Philip Thicknesse wrote ‘there was not a Picturesque clump of Trees, nor even a single Tree of beauty nor hedge row… for some miles around the place of his nativity, that he had not so perfectly in his mind’s eye.’”