Landscape with Ruins and Shepherds
Framed: 17 x 21 3/4 x 1 3/4 inches (43.18 x 55.25 x 4.45 cm)
Centennial Loan Exhibition: Drawings and Watercolors from Alumnae and their Families, Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY, May 19-June 11, 1961; Wildenstein and Company, NY, June 14-September 9, 1961, no. 66, as Landscape.
Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 7-April 4, 1965, no. 76, as Landscape with Ruin and Shepherds.
Old Master Drawings: Selected from the Collection of Milton McGreevy; Gifts and Bequest to Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1982, no. 25, as Landscape with Ruin and Shepherds.
Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Washington University Gallery of Art, September 22-December 3, 1989, unnumbered.
Master European Drawings from Polish Collections, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, April 17-June 6, 1993. NAMA addition.
Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November 29, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996-March 2, 1997, no. 50, as Landscape with Ruins and Shepherds.
Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12-September 6, 1998, no. 50, as Landscape with Ruins and Shepherds.
Landscapes East/Landscapes West: Representing Nature from Mount Fuji to Canyon de Chelly, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 27, 2011-April 15, 2012, as Landscape with Ruins and Shepherds.
Looking at Historic Lands, Urban and Rural, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 15-June 10, 2012, as Landscape with Ruins and Shepherds.
Drawing was an act of love and recreation for Thomas Gainsborough. Therefore, most of his drawings are independent works rather than studies for paintings. Such is the case with this late drawing. Here, against a backdrop of ruins and heavy foliage, shepherds pause to rest from their journey. Gainsborough’s idealized depictions of his native Suffolk landscape contrast with fellow Suffolk artist John Constable (1776–1837), whose depictions of the countryside addressed the specifics of the place he knew so well.
With P. & D. Colnaghi Co., Ltd., London;
Purchased from Colnaghi by Philip Hofer (1898-1984), Cambridge, MA, by February 25-November 19, 1949;
Purchased from Hofer, through Durlacher Brothers, New York, by Milton McGreevy (1903-1980), Shawnee Mission, KS, November 19, 1949-1980 [1];
His bequest to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1981.
NOTES:
[1] Placed on consignment from Philip Hofer with Durlacher Brothers, New York, February 25, 1949. Milton McGreevy purchased it on November 19, 1949 and Hofer was paid in full on December 2, 1949. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Durlacher Brothers records, Box 23, Drawings Stock Books.
Centennial Loan Exhibition: Drawings and Watercolors from Alumnae and their Families, exh. cat. (Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College Art Gallery, 1961), unpaginated, (repro.), as Landscape.
“Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 4, no. 6 (March 7-April 4, 1965): 40-41, (repro.), as Landscape with Ruin and Shepherds.
John T. Hayes, The Drawings of Thomas Gainsborough (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), no. 742, 1: 279; 2: unpaginated, (repro.), as Wooded Landscape with Drover, Packhorses and Building.
Old Master Drawings: Selected from the Collection of Milton McGreevy; Gifts and Bequest to Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1982), unpaginated, (repro.), as Landscape with Ruin and Shepherds.
Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, exh. cat. (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Gallery of Art, 1989), 8, 11, 44, (repro.), as Landscape with Ruins Shepherds.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 196, (repro.), as Landscape with Ruins and Shepherds.
Roger Ward, Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 163-64, (repro.), as Landscape with Ruins and Shepherds.
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 107, (repro.), as Landscape with Ruins and Shepherds.
