Cottage Children (The Wood Gatherers)  1787

This is one of what were called in the eighteenth century "fancy pictures," representing peasant children in rustic settings and inspired by the Spanish artist Murillo (1617–1682). The sentiment expressed in them was pleasing to Gainsborough's contemporaries, who seem not to have remarked in the sitters' hollow-eyed, wistful expressions an undercurrent of deprivation. In 1...