In Tate Britain
Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Thomas Gainsborough 1727–1788
- Medium
- Etching on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 298 x 394 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by A.E. Anderson 1910
- Reference
- N02717
Display caption
A 1753 edition of Gray's 'Elegy' (no.48) included an engraving, after Richard Bentley, which shows two people in a graveyard, seen through a ruined Gothic arch, studying a headstone epitaph. This soon became a model for other artists, including Gainsborough, to follow as they responded to the current taste for the solitary and melancholy. 'Night Thoughts' was very much a product of this taste. Young's display of unrestrained imagination vividly demonstrates how the Gothic revival shaped the Romantic sensibility of the later 1700s. The early careers of Romantic artists such as Blake, when he worked as an apprentice in Westminster Abbey in the 1770s, and Turner (no.41) found them among tombs.
Gallery label, September 2004
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Explore
- architecture(41,925)
- leisure and pastimes(7,606)
- recreational activities(2,859)
- reading(407)
- recreational activities(2,859)
- nature(46,287)
- animals: mammals(5,127)
- dog - non-specific(1,113)
- donkey(239)
- landscape(26,664)
- animals: mammals(5,127)
- people(35,419)
- actions: postures and motions(9,130)
- standing(3,166)
- adults(23,093)
- actions: postures and motions(9,130)
- society(35,071)
- sex and relationships(5,296)
- couple(1,284)
- sex and relationships(5,296)
- objects(23,206)
- religious and ceremonial(1,717)
- gravestone / tomb(326)
- religious and ceremonial(1,717)
You might like
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Country Cart and Figures
c.1775–80, reprinted 1971
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Country Cart, Cottage and Figures
c.1785, ?reprinted 1797
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded River Landscape with Shepherd and Sheep
c.1785, reprinted 1971
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded River Landscape with Shepherd and Sheep
c.1785
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Herdsman and Four Cows
c.1785–8, reprinted 1971
Thomas Gainsborough Churchyard with Donkeys
date not known
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Two Country Carts and Figures
1779–80, reprinted 1797
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Cows beside a Pool, Figures and Cottage
c.1775–80, reprinted 1971
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Country Cart, Cottage and Figures
c.1785, reprinted 1971
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Figures and Cows at a Watering Place (The Watering Place)
c.1776–7, reprinted 1797
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Figures and Cows at a Watering Place (The Watering Place)
c.1776–7, reprinted 1971
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Country Cart and Figures
c.1785–8, reprinted 1971
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Peasant Asleep and Horses outside a Shed
c.1775–80
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Riders and Packhorses
c.1783, reprinted 1971
Thomas Gainsborough Wooded Landscape with Herdsman and Three Cows
c.1785