The Kimbell Art Museum has capped off its year-long 50th anniversary celebration with the acquisition of an 18th century landscape painting that is regarded as a masterpiece of British art.
Going to Market, Early Morning, a 1773 oil on canvas painting by British artist Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) is on view in the Louis I. Kahn Building at the Kimbell.
The painting (48” x 58”) depicts a gathering of people, most on horseback, who arrive on a hilltop at daybreak en route to market on a misty morning.
“The Kimbell is honored and extremely fortunate to be able to add such an extraordinary work to its collection,” said Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell.
“The significance of Going to Market, Early Morning cannot be overstated,” Lee stated. “Widely published and exceptionally preserved, it has, since its first sale in 1773, been heralded as an exceedingly beautiful work and an important example of a new style of British landscape painting invented by Gainsborough himself.”
The painting is highly acknowledged for demonstrating the artist’s mastery of light effects, color, composition, and fluent and varied brushwork.
Going to Market, Early Morning was acquired in honor of Kay and Ben Fortson, longtime heads of the Kimbell Art Foundation, officials said, with gratitude for their leadership of the museum for more than fifty years.
The painting had remained under ownership in England before it was purchased by the Kimbell.
Going to Market, Early Morning was originally purchased from Gainsborough by his London banker, Henry Hoare, who bought it for display in his family’s country estate in Wiltshire.
A century later it was purchased at auction by the wealthy entrepreneur Thomas Holloway for Royal Holloway College, near London, where it was a highlight of the collection until its sale to a private collector in 1993.
The painting was put up for auction with Sotheby’s in 2019, when itsvalue was estimated at $7 to $9 million. The painting was widely exhibited in Europe throughout the years. It was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston during 2002 and 2003.
It was purchased by the Kimbell this year through Simon Dickinson Ltd., London. The auction service does not disclose the value of art works.
A founder of the Royal Academy of the Arts, Gainsborough was trained in London, Sudbury and Ipswich. He settled in the spa resort city of Bath in 1759 and established himself as an acclaimed portrait painter.
He enjoyed horseback riding in the countryside with his friends, observing, memorizing and then sketching landscape imagery. He later abandoned portrait painting to focus on landscape painting, at first inspired by the landscapes of Dutch and Flemish masters Jacob van Ruisdael, Peter Paul Rubens and Claude Lorrain.
Gainsborough was known to paint from observation and imagination rather than painting scenery onsite. He preferred to concentrate on the effects of light, color and brushwork to create mood and provoke sentiment.
Going to Market, Early Morning has been extensively written about and it remains open to interpretation. For example, some interpret the woman with infants as either a beggar, ignored by the more fortunate peasants, or as a symbol of motherly love or charity, a concept that would have resonated with Gainsborough, who was known for his compassion for the poor.
Acquiring the painting as the Kimbell’s 50th Anniversary celebration draws to a close was particularly significant, according to museum officials.
The painting expands and elevates the Kimbell’s holdings of 18th century British painting. It is also serves as a fitting tribute to museum founders Kay and Velma Kimbell, who favored British paintings when originally building the Kimbell Art Foundation’s collection.
Among the Kimbell’s collection were two early paintings by Gainsborough, Portrait of a Woman, possibly of the Lloyd Family (circa 1750) and Suffolk Landscape (circa mid-1750s), both acquired by the Kimbell Art Foundation in the 1940s.
In addition, the large scale and striking visual impression of Going to Market, Early Morning complements the Kimbell’s full-scale portraits by Reynolds, Romney, and Raeburn, officials said.
The Kimbell is open Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Fridays, noon-8 p.m.; Sundays, noon-5 p.m. Admission to the permanent collection is free. Admission for special exhibitions is $18 for adults, $16 for seniors and $14 for children ages 6 to 11.
Admission is half-price every Tuesday and after 5 p.m. on Fridays.
For general information, call 817-332-8451.