Gainsborough chalk drawing to go under the hammer

An 18th Century chalk drawing of the Suffolk coast by the artist Thomas Gainsborough is expected to fetch up to £50,000 when it is sold at auction later this month.

The artwork by the Sudbury-born artist was said to have been given to his friend Goodenough Earle, a landowner who inherited the Barton Grange estate near Taunton in Somerset.

The piece will go under the hammer at Cheffins in Cambridge on 24 June and is estimated to fetch between £30,000 and £50,000.

Patricia Cross, an art expert at Cheffins, said: "As this is the most ambitious of the early large-scale works of the artist, we expect it to be of interest for private collectors and institutions alike."

The picture depicts a coastal landscape with donkeys and pigs and is the earliest of 14 pictures given to Earle.

The chalk drawing was sold in 1913 and was bought by the current owner's grandfather in 1944 and has remained in a private collection in Norfolk since.

Historian Hugh Besley said the drawing was made when Gainsborough was about 20 years old and it illustrated his "extraordinary capabilities as a draughtsman".

Cross, head of old master and 18th- and 19th-century European art at Cheffins, said: "This is a significant drawing which provides a remarkable insight into Gainsborough's extraordinary skill in the early part of his career, a point when many of his studies were concentrated on the fields and woodland around Sudbury."

Do you have a story suggestion for Suffolk? Contact us below.

Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.