Thomas Gainsborough's identity as an artist has always been confused by the dual nature of his creativity. As the only important eighteenth-century British artist who has made as great a contribution to landscape painting as to portraiture, the understanding of his work as a totality is often flawed. This illuminating and insightful book reinterprets Gainsborough through his earliest works, contacts and influences, and reveals the background to some of the most potent images of the eighteenth century.