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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jonathan Jones

Rural roaming: Thomas Gainsborough's Cornard Wood

Thomas Gainsborough's Cornard Wood
The old common lands of England were being relentlessly enclosed by capitalist landowners when Thomas Gainsborough painted this woodland scene in 1748. It shows rural folk travelling in the free world of the woods. The sky over this dense chunk of British undergrowth is full of watery clouds whose swagging silver speaks of our place and our skies. British art had become self-consciously British by 1748. It had also become precociously romantic
Illustration: Photograph: National Gallery Collection/Corbis
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