The small market town of Sudbury in Suffolk, like so many equivalent towns in the East of England from the late Middle Ages, prospered from textiles - wool, weaving and later silk. This history is variously exhibited by its buildings -narrow streets of timber framed houses, a marketplace surrounded by Georgian townhouses, an 1820 Neoclassical town hall and 20th century factories tucked in between. The town sits in a low-lying valley of the River Stour, half surrounded by water meadows, which you cross when arriving by train. The Stour, of course, is synonymous with the painter John Constable (1776-1837). However, in Sudbury, Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) is the painter of fame. He was born and raised there, the son of a merchant and lived there briefly between 1746-1752 before moving to Ipswich, then Bath and London where he became the go-to portrait painter.
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