Excerpt from Thomas Gainsborough<br><br>The lack of research and the consequent absence of new material are frankly admitted by one of the later biographers of Gainsborough, Lord Ronald Gower.<br><br>Although, he says, some elaborately illustrated lives have appeared during the last few years, they contain little beyond the facts given by Fulcher. His life of Gainsborough, although only a booklet which can be 'read through in a couple of hours, is the most complete account we possess of one of our greatest painters, and from it all the material of his later biographies has been gleaned. Lord Ronald's statement is substantially, but not entirely accurate, for Gainsborough's letters to William Jackson had not been found when Fulcher wrote his book in 1855, and these have been available to the modern biographers as well as a few other letters that have come to light in auction rooms, or have been unearthed by the labours of the Historical Commis sion. However, apart from these letters and some odd notes, the recent books contain very little that is not to be found in Fulcher, and in Fulcher the gaps are very large indeed, for his research was on a limited scale, except in the neighbourhood of Gainsborough's birth place.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.