and the Image of Rural Life
2: Cottage Door with Children Playing (1778)
John Barrell , Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, contrasts this and later works by Gainsborough with his earlier paintings of the 1750s which he considered last week. He relates them to the writings of Goldsmith, Crabbe and Hannah More , and suggests that the differences in the art of the two periods can tell us much about changing social attitudes in 18th-century England.