Descent from the Cross (after Peter Paul Rubens)

Gainsborough's copy after Rubens's Descent from the Cross, dated 1767 at Gainsborough's House, reveals the systematic self-education that underlay his apparently spontaneous painterly manner. Copying Old Master works was the standard academic practice for training painters — Reynolds famously spent years copying Italian masters in Rome — but Gainsborough's copies were different in motivation from academic exercises: he copied the works he personally admired, seeking to understand their specific technical procedures rather than to master a canonical hierarchy. Rubens was his particular hero among the Flemish masters, and the Descent from the Cross — one of Rubens's greatest altarpiece compositions, the original in Antwerp Cathedral — represented the fullest expression of the Flemish Baroque synthesis Gainsborough wanted to absorb: the dramatic anatomy, the rich color, and above all the fluid, loaded handling of paint that Gainsborough was translating into his own atmospheric portrait style. His letters express this admiration explicitly: he once wrote that he wished he had been born in a time when he could have studied under Rubens rather than Reynolds. This copy documents that aspiration in practice, showing the mature Bath painter learning directly from the master he most revered.

The copy demonstrates Gainsborough's response to Rubens's dynamic composition and rich color, filtered through his own lighter, more fluid handling. Rather than a slavish reproduction, this is Gainsborough in dialogue with a predecessor he revered, absorbing lessons of color and movement that would influence his own paintings.