‘The Market Cart”

A well done copy of the famous work by Thomas Gainsborough which has been attributed to the clever hand of Thomas Barker of Bath.

This scene exemplifies the travelers that moved about the English countryside during this era.

The Market Cart is a 1786 oil on canvas painting by the British artist Thomas Gainsborough. This is one of his final landscapes, painted about 18 months before his death and is now in the collection of the National Gallery in London, to which it was presented by the British Institution's governors in 1830.

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, in a book published in 1901, claimed that this painting depicted Gainsborough Lane, which later gave its name to part of the South East Area, Ipswich.