[London:]: Printed for the Author, and Sold by Mr. Fores in Piccadilly, and all the Booksellers in Town. -, 1788.
Physical Description
61, [1] p.; 164 mm. (Quarto.)
Contents
[T.p.] - [Text].
References
ESTC, T85246
H. Belsey, Gainsborough: a country life (2002).
M. Postle, Thomas Gainsborough (2002).
M. Rosenthal and M. Myrone, Gainsborough [exhibition catalogue] (2002).
T. Gainsborough, The letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. J. Hayes (2001).
A. Asfour and P. Williamson, Gainsborough's vision (1999).
On Thicknesse see P. Gosse's Dr. Viper: the querulous life of Philip Thicknesse (1952).
Summary Note
The title printed at the head of the first page of text is simply, 'Anecdotes, &c.'
Philip Thicknesse had been a friend of Gainsborough, whom he had met in 1754 and whom he had encouraged to move to Bath in 1758. One of the painter's few etchings was of 'Philip Thicknesse's Cottage' (1754). In 1760 Gainsborough had made a portrait of the singer and viola-da-gamba player, Ann Ford, who became the third Mrs. Thicknesse in 1762; he had also subscribed to Thicknesse's 'A Year's Journey through France, and Part of Spain' (1777). But after some thirty years of friendship the quarrelsome Thicknesse managed, in the early 1780s, to fall out with the painter; and much of this short sketch is an account of a dispute about an unfinished portrait and a viola da gamba.
Reproductions
A microfilm copy was published in 1986 (Woodbridge CT: Research Publications).
A facsimile edition was published by Pallas Athene Publishers, London in 2018
Provenance
Presented by William J. Thoms, F.S.A. in 1869 (see 'Library Report for the Year 1869', RA Annual Report, Appendix No. 6, p. 28).
Binding Note
20th-century quarter calf, brown cloth-covered boards; retaining earlier spine-piece lettered 'Thicknesse's Life Of Gainsborough' and 'R.A.'