A Painter's Name On the Prairie?
Is the village of Gainsborough, Sask., named after a famous British painter?
Since coming across that explanation for the town’s name, I’ve been meaning to take a closer look to see if that’s in fact the case.
An entry in Alan Rayburn’s authoritative Place Names of Canada describes the naming of Saskatchewan’s Gainsborough as a tribute to the much-acclaimed 18th century English portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough.
Here’s a page-grab showing the full text of entry:
If true, it’s an intriguing allusion to a noted figure in art history.
The puzzle for me, though, is the shortage of evidence, outside the Rayburn book, backing up the Thomas Gainsborough angle. Most sources offer a more prosaic explanation for how Gainsborough got its name.
The accepted story, as repeated at Wikipedia, is that early settler J. J. Sadler simply named the village after Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, which had been Sadler’s former home back in England.
In that telling, Gainsborough, the Saskatchewan village, has no connection to Gainsborough, the famous painter.
However, I did go digging for something that might corroborate Rayburn’s version of the naming, and looked up “Gainsborough” in Geographic Names of Saskatchewan, a 2005 book by author Bill Barry.
According to Barry, when the CPR arrived at the prairie location in 1892, it wasn’t yet known as Gainsborough. It was then that J. J. Sadler “suggested the name of the new station to honour Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88), English portrait and landscape artist, perhaps most famous for ‘The Blue Boy’.”
That does lend credence to more colourful, painter-inspired, version of the village’s naming origin story. Barry’s book was likely Rayburn’s source for the entry in Place Names of Canada which came out in 2010 and where I first came across the Gainsborough/painter story.
I wouldn’t call this definitive just yet. But assuming Barry’s research is solid, it appears this village in Saskatchewan may in fact be named in tribute to an English painter who never set foot in Canada.
Bill Barry's book, published in 2005, may have been Alan Rayburn's source for the “Gainsborough” entry in Place Names of Canada.