Gainsborough's House | Visit Suffolk

Gainsborough’s House is the birthplace museum of Thomas Gainsborough RA (1727–1788). The museum’s collection encompasses Gainsborough’s entire career, from early portraits and landscapes painted in Suffolk in the 1750s, to later works from his London period of the 1770s and 1780s, shown alongside 18th-century furniture and memorabilia together with work by Gainsborough’s contemporaries and followers. The permanent collection is augmented by several loans of paintings by Gainsborough or his contemporaries, from public and private collections. An outstanding collection of drawings is housed in the Study Gallery, alongside prints, rare books and Gainsborough ephemera.

There is a varied programme of temporary exhibitions of both historic and contemporary art.

The visitor entrance to Gainsborough’s House is on Weavers Lane and leads into Reception and the Gift Shop, with the Hills Room Education Centre upstairs. The entrance area leads out on to the terrace and the delightful walled garden, with its ancient mulberry tree.

The Print Workshop at Gainsborough’s House is now recognised as one of the best facilities of its kind in the country and welcomes printmakers through its membership scheme and courses. A programme of classes, intensive summer courses and tailor-made workshops for community and educational groups is designed to help both experienced artists and newcomers to printmaking develop a wide range of skills.