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Gainsborough's portrait "Lieutenant General Edward Ligonier"

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shows relationship between man and beast

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"it was possible to judge a Gainsborough's portrait as if it were a living person"

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we have the sense when confronting one of his paintings that we are confronting someone personally

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e.g. going about their daily business on the streets of Bath, where Gainsborough lived

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imparted the compassion of his subject, human and animal

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and their ability to express fine feelings

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Gainsborough remarked in a letter to one of his sitters

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he was sorry that his sons had not found favor with the picture

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that they were hoping to see more brilliancy in the eyes

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but Gainsborough said that instead of brilliancy, he aimed to convey in the eyes tenderness and humanity expressive of goodness

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relationship between animals and humans

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in dog's in particular

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reflects his own attitude to animals

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a highly sensitive individual and a non-conformist

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having been brought up in the low church

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influenced by the sermons that his father read in their own church

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Gainsborough took up the church's drive against the cruelty to animals in a determined way

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painted in the late 18th century

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Cartesian theory was asserting a strong influence

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was opposed to Descartes' mechanistic views

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believe that animals were also intelligent, emotional beings

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his views were democratic and anti-anthropocentric

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the 18th century gentleman was often represented with his hound

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often though of symbolic of aristocratic masculinity

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painting: Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch

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has both his arms around his loving hound

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the dog sits up straight staring at the viewer

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a man of sensibility

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a lively and delicate feeling, a quick sense of the right and wrong in all human actions and other objects considered in every view of morality and taste

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the expression of sensibility

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John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, and Adam Smith

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in poetry, literature, and images

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regarded the moral regulation of society during a period of great change

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when industry, commerce, and the disruption of rural life threated to upset civil society

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the poor were naturally objects

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Gainsborough represented them in a compassionate way

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Cottage Door in San Marino

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18th century Britain

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had attained a level of elegance and liberty to rival ancient times

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sensibility was a means to express one's moral sense in a cultural refinement

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a hallmark of a person with the natural world

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in Gainsborough's representation of St. George and the Duke of Buccleuch, there is an emotional relationship with their dogs as affectionate companions

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a kind of epitome of refined sensibility

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painting: Richard St George Mansergh - St George

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1780

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playing with contrasts of portraying both a military man who is also a person of sensibility

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in the opening volleys in the battle of Germantown

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St. George was shot in the head

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taken from the field, and trepanned, leaving him with a hole in the side of his skull

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the wound was covered with a disfiguring silver plate

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habitually covered by Saint George, with a black silk cap and it never healed

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"he now lives with a considerable part of his head shot away, and though feeble, emaciated, and in almost constant pain, his imagination and his virtues have lost nothing of their vigor"

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"his whole deportment, romance, his style of acting, seemed formed by the ideas of risk"

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was very concerned with the state of workers on his state

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appalled by the poverty on his state

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published estate of affairs lamenting the state of Irish peasantry