Landscape with Cottage (recto); Studies of Heads (verso)

c. 1820s

Landscape with Cottage (recto); Studies of Heads (verso), c. 1820s. Thomas Monro (British, 1759–1833). Black chalk and gray wash with scraping; sheet: 15.6 x 23 cm (6 1/8 x 9 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Louise S. Richards 2005.300 Dr. Thomas Monro is best known as a patron who exercised significant influence in the London art world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but he was also an amateur artist and competent follower of Thomas Gainsborough. The physician’s drawings were monochromatic, done in wash with additions of charcoal, chalk, or india ink in emulation of Gainsborough’s moody rural views. On the verso of the drawing is a mise-en-page of caricatures and a hillside—perhaps whimsically drawn by multiple artists at one of the doctor’s salons. Dr. Thomas Monro established what became known as an "Academy," where artists gathered in the evenings to draw, at his home overlooking the Thames.