Les dimensions haptique et musicale des tableaux de Gainsborough

Abstract

This articles aims at exploring how Gainsborough's painting acts upon other sensorial modes than vision: touch and hearing. At a time when empiricism prevailed, debates on the interplay between senses were in the air, as in the question of Molyneux, which sought to understand how a blind person who recovers sight apprehends reality. Without really speculating on the subject, Gainsborough put those circulating ideas into practice, be it in his creative approach or in the way he wanted his viewers to engage with his works.