''The Market Cart'' is a 1786 oil on canvas painting by the British artist

Thomas Gainsborough Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...

. It is one of his final landscapes, painted about 18 months before his death and is now in the collection of the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, to which it was presented by the

British Institution The British Institution (in full, the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom; founded 1805, disbanded 1867) was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it w ...

's governors in 1830.

Description

The painting depicts a horse-drawn cart, with two girls sat aboard, travelling along a woodland path. It was first exhibited at Gainsborough's own home in Pall Mall in 1786. He would later add a figure of a woodman gathering bundles of wood in 1787.

William Dutt William Alfred Dutt (1870 - 18 September 1939) was an East Anglian writer and naturalist. He was noted as a very knowledgeable recluse. For many years he lived in a cottage full of books in Carlton Colville. Books by William Dutt Many of his book ...

, in a book published in 1901, claimed that this painting depicted

Gainsborough Lane Gainsborough Lane is a rural road in the South East Area, Ipswich which has been noted for its charm since the nineteenth century. In 1888 John Ellor Taylor, curator of Ipswich Museum, described it as the "dearest walk" available locally for Ips ...

, which later gave its name to part of the

South East Area, Ipswich The South East Area, Ipswich is one of five administrative areas in Ipswich, through which Ipswich Borough Council divides its spending and enables feedback from local residents, businesses and community groups. The area is composed of three wards, ...

References

Landscape paintings by Thomas Gainsborough 1786 paintings Collections of the National Gallery, London Dogs in art Horses in art {{18C-painting-stub