One of the highlights of the Royal Collection is Gainsborough’s ‘Diana and Actaeon’, a painting I always make a point of visiting when I am viewing a new temporary exhibition in the Queen’s Gallery
One of the highlights of the Royal Collection is Gainsborough’s ‘Diana and Actaeon’, a painting I always make a point of visiting when I am viewing a new temporary exhibition in the Queen’s Gallery. An unusual picture, it is Gainsborough’s only mythological subject with an identifiable classical literary subject.
Best-known for his portraits, Suffolk-born Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) would have preferred to spend his time painting landscapes, but couldn’t make a living at that. He stuck to ‘face-painting’ as he called it, with increasing ill humour, but for some reason he avoided the great mythological subjects. So this version of ‘Diana and Actaeon’ is unique in his oeuvre, and hints at what fascinating pictures he might have painted.
There are three chalk studies for the painting, and two of them are included in this enjoyable in-focus exhibition at Gainsborough’s House, the artist’s birthplace and museum.
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