For some reason I have never previously been to Gainsborough’s House, so was pleased to be invited, travelling by way of the branch line from Mark’s Tey which somehow survived Dr. Beeching’s cuts. It’s where Gainsborough’s parents lived and where he was born in 1727, not long after they had bought the house for £232 in 1722. The sales particulars when it was sold again in 1792 describe it as a ‘Brickt Mansion…replete with every convenient Accommodation for a genteel Family, or principal Manufacturer’. Gainsborough’s father was both genteel and a local cloth merchant, who bankrupted himself in 1733, maybe by adding the brick façade. Thomas was the youngest of at least nine children, educated at the local grammar school, and returned to live in Sudbury when his father died in October 1748, painting Mr. and Mrs. Andrews in a field nearby (there’s a view of Sudbury church in the distance):-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Dear Charles,
Those can’t be Gainsborough’s brushes – in your last photo; does an artist live there now?
Antony
They aren’t ! They’re in the very well equipped print studio attached at the back of the house. Charles
Strangely I was giving the last of a series of talks there today.
What time ? I had wondered whether to ring you. Charles
10 to 1
I just missed you. Charles
It has been run in an exemplary fashion . Mark Bills has continued the tradition of organising informative exhibitions very often related to Gainsborough’s lifetime – often imaginative ones. Hugh Belsay’s contribution was magnificent . Sudbury is quite small . So funding must be an issue . The Trustees are to be commended too in supporting their curators’ ideas.
There must be many curators of museums and galleries throughout Britain who would benefit from a visit and a meeting with the present curator.