Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), English Gainsborough was born and educated in Sudbury, England. At age thirteen, Gainsborough arrived in London eager to become an artist. He studied with a noted French artist and was influenced by seventeenth-century Dutch landscape paintings. In his early years, Gainsborough primarily painted landscapes and worked as a restorer for art dealers. Although his true desire was to paint landscapes exclusively, portraits were in much greater demand in eighteenth-century England. As a portraitist, he was highly acclaimed and sought after by the English aristocracy for his elegant and flattering portrayals. With the influence of Anthony van Dyck's portraits and Peter Paul Rubens's landscapes, his style lost its distinctly French orientation. From the early 1760s on he maintained close contacts with London society and with the Royal Academy, of which he was a founding member. In his later years he experimented with different techniques and at times ironic and witty violations of standard formats of landscape and portraiture.