Reference code
GAI
Title
Gainsborough letters
Date
c.1767-1788
Level
Fonds
Extent & medium
17 items
Previous reference codes
1439
Content Description
Letters by Thomas Gainsborough to William Jackson of Exeter.
Provenance
Items 1 - 13 originate with William Jackson, of Exeter. By descent to J. Ballard who sold them to the Royal Academy. Item 16 has a complex archival history, treated in the relevant item level description.
Acquisition Details
Purchased from J. Ballard by the Royal Academy in 1888. Item 16 purchased from Wilfrid Herbert in 1901.
Arrangement
The letters are numbered and arranged in the order that they were published in William T. Whitley's Thomas Gainsborough. The sequence is not necessarily chronological.
Physical Characteristics
The letters have clearly been subject to conservation at some point in the last thirty years. The quality of the work suggests a date at some point post-1980.
Finding Aids
HMC description catalogue by Jean Agnew, September 1972.
Bibliography
Thomas Gainsborough, by William T. Whitley, 1915. The letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall, 1963. The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. John Hayes, 2001.