Thomas Gainsborough is best known as an English portrait painter. He was well-known during his lifetime, painting the portraits of the English King and Queen and other important people, yet he had little interest in painting portraits and prefered to paint landscapes, instead. For this reason, Gainsborough would often include natural scenery in the background of many of his portraits.Due to his fame, Gainsborough was able to help establish the Royal Academy of the Arts in London, which became a famous institution for artists to exhibit their work and a school to educate people about art. Gainsborough was admired for the speed with which he applied his paint, and he worked more from his observations of nature than from any formal rules. His later work was characterized by a light palette and easy, quick strokes.
