DOCSLIB.ORG

Expert Adviser's Statement.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Expert Adviser's Statement.Pdf EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Brief Description of item Watercolour by John Martin (1789-1854) (b. Heydon Bridge, Northumberland, d. Douglas, Isle of Man), The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host, signed and dated: ‘J. Martin/1836’ (lower right) Pencil and watercolour with gum arabic heightened with bodycolour and with scratching out; 23 x 33 ¾ in. (584 x 857 mm) (No condition report provided) The watercolour illustrates the passage in Exodus, 14:26-31, when the Lord instructed Moses to stretch out his hand to release the waters and drown the Egyptians pursuing the fleeing Israelites across the Red Sea which had been miraculously parted to allow them passage: And the waters returned, and covered the chariots and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; and there remained not so much as one of them. But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on the right hand, and on their left. Moses stands on a promontory on the right of the image, commanding the waters, accompanied by the saved Israelites. Employing a panoramic composition to magnificent effect, Martin exaggerates the scale of the waves by sketching in the massed crowds of Israelites along the coast to the right and by diminishing the size of the drowning figures, horses and chariots, and two pyramids on the horizon. A blood red sunset below a sweeping black sky symbolizing mass death and retribution looms over the Red Sea. 2. Context Provenance and Prices (Probably) J.E. Jesse, by 1876; with Agnew’s, London; with Leger & Son, London, by September 1954, sold in or after 1958 to George Goyder; Sotheby’s, London, 11 July 1991, lot 192, where purchased by private owner (sold for world auction record price for watercolour by this artist £107,800); Christie’s, London, 3 July 2012, lot 139 (est. £300,000-500,000, sold for £758,050, also world auction record) COMPARABLE PRICES • Girtin’s Jedburgh Abbey, sold for auction record for that artist in 1990 for £290,000 and again for record price of £470,000 in 2002 • John Robert Cozens Albano, ex Thomas Lawrence coll., record price £198,500 in 1991 and in 2010 estimated to fetch £500,000, sold for £2.4 million, record for any 18th-century British watercolour. (The Telegraph 2010) • Turner Heidelberg with a rainbow record £2,038,500 Sotheby’s 2001 (estimate £800,000) then record for Turner • Turner Blue Rigi, 2006, then world record price for any British work of art on paper. £5,800,000 (estimate was £2 million) Tate paid £4,950,000 Literature M. L. Pendered, John Martin, Painter. His Life and Times, London, 1924, p. 146 T. Balston, John Martin 1789-1854. His Life and Works, London, 1947, p. 138n. ‘Perspex’‘Current shows and Comments’, Apollo, LX, no. 315, Sept.1954, pp. 55-6 repr. W. Feaver, The Art of John Martin, Oxf., 1975, pp. 91, 102, 177, 191, 224n.78, pl. 64 A. Wilton and A. Lyles, Royal Academy of Arts, London, Great Age of British Watercolours, exh. Cat. 1993, cat. 212 repr. Michael Campbell, John Martin, 1789-1854: la oscuridad visible: estampas y dibujos de la Colección Campbell [creation of light: prints and drawings from the Campbell Collection], Valencia: Bancaja; Madrid: Calcografia Nacional, Real Accademia de Bellas Artes; Bilbao: Museum de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2006, p. 567. Exhibited Probably Wrexham, Art Treasures & Industrial Exhibition of North Wales, July- October 1876, no. 931, as ‘The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host’, lent by J. E. Jesse [review in Wrexham Guardian and Denbighshire and Flintshire Advertiser, Sat. 12 Aug. 1876: “Mr Jesse contributes also two pictures by Martin…’The destruction of Pharoah’s Host in the Red Sea.’ It is of course a striking work… curling waves in the foreground”]; London, Royal Academy, and Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, The Great Age of British Watercolours 1750-1880, January-July 1993, no. 212, illustrated in colour, pl. 303 3. Waverley criteria • 2. Aesthetic: Outstanding aesthetic importance as an example of an ‘exhibition watercolour’ of a historical subject in the sublime landscape tradition • 3. Scholarship: Outstanding significance for the study of the history of British art and a pivotal work in the oeuvre of John Martin in particular. Best known for his spectacular oil paintings and the series of mezzotints illustrating Paradise Lost and the Bible, here John Martin has created the epitome of an ‘exhibition watercolour’ in the sublime style, intended to stand its own ground in competition with oils on the walls of exhibitions. Throughout the 1830s, Martin had executed a number of enormous apocalyptic visions in oil that had been exhibited to great popular success around Britain and those, along with his mezzotints, ensured that his art ‘penetrated the culture of the nineteenth-century English-speaking world more deeply and more profoundly than that of any other modern artist’ (Martin Myrone, John Martin: Apocalypse, Tate, 2011, p. 11). His work was seen by thousands around the country in his own lifetime and by many more around the world through his prints. Edward Bulwer-Lytton thought he was ‘the greatest, most lofty, the most permanent, the most original genius of his age’. But his popular success (his prints hung on the wall of the Bronte parsonage and were an early influence on their imaginations and his influence on Cecil B. DeMille and the early Hollywood epics), Ruskin’s disapproval, Martin’s removal of his name from the lists for election to the RA and his focus later in his life on engineering sewers and delivering clean water to London also meant that until recently his status in the history of British art has been underplayed. The reputation of exhibition watercolours has also suffered, mainly seen as ‘Victorian’ and thus also popular and unworthy of serious attention until the 1980s. Martin’s importance to British art history is now recognized and this watercolour plays a key role in that history and a pivotal role in his own artistic development and career. There were only a handful of British artists who employed the sublime successfully in oil on the grand scale: the Bristol artist Francis Danby, John Martin and J.M.W. Turner. Danby did not attempt watercolours of this type, only Martin and Turner did and this watercolour is an essential work for exploring Martin’s relationship with Danby’s compositions and their influence on his work in particular. This watercolour is the most spectacular of Martin’s works of this type and is an entirely different type of work compared to Turner’s more sublime watercolours like Travellers caught in a Snowstorm (BM) or his watercolours of shipwrecks. Turner’s are anchored in nature where Martin’s come entirely from his imagination and from the style and motifs he had developed in the 1820s in his oils and in the earlier 1830s in his mezzotints. Here he successfully captures them in watercolour, in an example that has no match in his own work or that of his contemporaries. The closest examples are of Manfred (Birmingham and Whitworth) and The Last Man (Laing) and a watercolour of a sunset over a rocky bay, much smaller and almost empty of figures and narrative (private collection). But none of them come close to the power of the colours, sweeping forms and bold horizontal format of this work. This was acknowledged by its inclusion in The Great Age of British Watercolours, the definitive watercolour exhibition of our age at the RA in 1993, where it stood out memorably from the rest of the works as an example unique in vision and in the medium and style used to achieve it. It would have been included in the monograph exhibition on Martin at Tate in 2011 if it had been available for loan and if seen there its unique relationship to the rest of his watercolours would have been evident and celebrated. Alone among them, it was not based on a larger oil nor was it turned into one later. Nor is it part of the series of watercolours or sepia drawings he produced in the 1830s to work out the themes and compositions of his series of mezzotints illustrating episodes of the Bible (two watercolours in the V&A fall into this category). Instead this watercolour is developed from one of the key compositions from his mezzotint series, a composition that was described by the Library of Fine Arts (Jan. 1834) as ‘the finest of the series, the grandest and richest of all’. The mezzotint of The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host (see image appended) was hugely well-known, admired and influential in its print form. Recognizing this, Martin developed it here in a daringly simple way through the medium of watercolour, exploring the technical abilities of the medium with extensive use of black pigment, bodycolour, and gum arabic and refining the composition in an almost modern way, reducing the detail of the figures and narrative and swirling central vortex found in the mezzotint and replacing it with a sweeping strong horizontal, near-abstract attention to bold compositional forms and a stylised treatment of the churning waves. He made watercolour records of the mezzotint compositions: there is a modest and restrained version in the V&A which underscores what a departure this large bold watercolour really makes in his work and what an achievement it was. It was the only time he was to develop a mezzotint composition in this way in watercolour, and is thus a pivotal work in his oeuvre, of critical importance in the development of his art.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Artists` Picture Rooms in Eighteenth-Century Bath
    ARTISTS' PICTURE ROOMS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BATH Susan Legouix Sloman In May 1775 David Garrick described to Hannah More the sense of well­ being he experienced in Bath: 'I do this, & do that, & do Nothing, & I go here and go there and go nowhere-Such is ye life of Bath & such the Effects of this place upon me-I forget my Cares, & my large family in London, & Every thing ... '. 1 The visitor to Bath in the second half of the eighteenth century had very few decisions to make once he was safely installed in his lodgings. A well-established pattern of bathing, drinking spa water, worship, concert and theatre-going and balls meant that in the early and later parts of each day he was likely to be fully occupied. However he was free to decide how to spend the daylight hours between around lOam when the company generally left the Pump Room and 3pm when most people retired to their lodgings to dine. Contemporary diaries and journals suggest that favourite daytime pursuits included walking on the parades, carriage excursions, visiting libraries (which were usually also bookshops), milliners, toy shops, jewellers and artists' showrooms and of course, sitting for a portrait. At least 160 artists spent some time working in Bath in the eighteenth century,2 a statistic which indicates that sitting for a portrait was indeed one of the most popular activities. Although he did not specifically have Bath in mind, Thomas Bardwell noted in 1756, 'It is well known, that no Nation in the World delights so much in Face-painting, or gives so generous Encouragement to it as our own'.3 In 1760 the Bath writer Daniel Webb noted 'the extraordinary passion which the English have for portraits'.4 Andre Rouquet in his survey of The Present State of the Arts in England of 1755 described how 'Every portrait painter in England has a room to shew his pictures, separate from that in which he works.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dispersal and Formation of Sir Thomas Lawrence's Collection
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-55133-5 - The Drawings of Michelangelo and his Followers in the Ashmolean Museum Paul Joannides Excerpt More information the dispersal and formation of sir thomas lawrence’s collection of drawings by michelangelo i. the dispersal from Michelangelo apart – in its essentials has not changed since 1846, although one sheet of drawings hitherto In 1846 the University of Oxford acquired, through the placed in the Raphael school is here included as a copy generosity of a number of benefactors but supremely that after Michelangelo – an identification, indeed, made in of Lord Eldon, a large number of drawings by, attributed 1830 but subsequently overlooked.5 to, or associated with Michelangelo and Raphael. Put The two series that came to Oxford were the remains on display in the University Galleries were fifty-three of two much larger series of drawings, both owned by mountings of drawings associated with Michelangelo, and the man who has clear claim to be the greatest of all 137 by Raphael.1 Some of these mountings comprised English collectors of Old Master Drawings: Sir Thomas two or more drawings and the overall total of individual Lawrence. It is Lawrence’s collection that provided all drawings was somewhat larger.2 This exhibition and – the drawings by, and most of those after, Michelangelo consequently – its catalogue included most, but not the now in the Ashmolean Museum. Lawrence, himself a totality, of the drawings by these artists offered for sale fine draughtsman, whose precision and skill in this area
    [Show full text]
  • The Origins and Nature of Romanticism This Evening I Want To
    The Origins and Nature of Romanticism This evening I want to say something about the origin and nature of romanticism. Generally speaking, it would be fair to conclude, it seems to me, that the neo-classical movement was official, conservative and in its later phases actively reactionary in the rigidity of its rules, though must qualify this by observing that early neo-classical architectural theory and practice gave birth to the modern theory of functionalism, so important for the twentieth century, and neo-classical paining in France under David gave birth to realism, so important for nineteenth century French painting. There can be no doubt that after 1815 the Romantic movement expressed the tensions and mood of the new age more profoundly than Neo-classicism. ‘To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art—that is, intimacy, spirituality, colour, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts’ wrote Baudelaire in his critical review of the Salon of 1846. ‘For me, Romanticism is the most recent, the latest expression of the beautiful’. The sources of romanticism lie outside of art itself and I shall not discuss them in detail, for they are often discussed. The rise of popular democracy, of industrialism, and of capitalism, changed utterly the artist’s relation to society. He importance of his old patrons the church, the court, the nobility declined swiftly. In the new situation the artist became an individualist forced to rely upon himself. Romanticism was the consequence of the new situation. It was not a style like Gothic or Baroque (this is important to grasp at once) not a style but as Baudelaire says ‘a mode of feeling’.
    [Show full text]
  • Born in 1769, by the Age of 10 Thomas Lawrence Was Already Showing Remarkable Artistic Ability. Our Expert, Amina Wright, Explor
    BY ARTS SOCIETY LECTURER AMINA WRIGHT Born in 1769, by the age of 10 Thomas Lawrence was already showing remarkable artistic ability. Our expert, Amina Wright, explores the story of the boy that went on to become president of the Royal Academy of Arts 1. PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG PRODIGY The portrait painter Thomas Lawrence first came to public attention as a boy in the 1770s, when his father kept a superior coaching inn, the Black Bear at Devizes, Wiltshire. Travelling from London to the fashionable spa town of Bath, the novelist, diarist and playwright Fanny Burney was one of many famous guests at the Bear; stopping there in 1780 she found the innkeeper’s family to be well read and musically gifted. Their youngest son, Thomas, was ‘a most lovely boy of 10 years of age, who seems to be not merely the wonder of their family, but of the times for his astonishing skill in drawing'. The actor David Garrick, a regular at the Bear, was equally impressed by Tommy’s acting skills and he foresaw his future success ‘poised between the pencil and the stage’. The child regularly attended performances at the Theatre Royal in Bath with his father, an aspiring thespian and poet who would return actors’ hospitality in the green room with a welcome at the Bear. This ensured that Lawrence’s reputation as a rising star spread through the literary and artistic networks of Bath and Wiltshire. Head of Minerva Drawn at Oxford by Master Lawrence at the Age of 11 Years (1779) 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Was Queen Charlotte Black? | the Hook - Charlottesville's Weekly News
    Was Queen Charlotte black? | The Hook - Charlottesville's weekly news... http://www.readthehook.com/98341/cover-was-queen-charlotte-black COVER STORIES Was Queen Charlotte black? By VIRGINIA DAUGHERTY Published online Thursday Feb 2nd, 2006 and in print issue #0505 dated Thursday Feb 2nd, 2006 Was Queen Charlotte, our city's namesake, black? Her African heritage is part of the legends and facts that cling to the petite German woman who married "mad King George" and who inspired not only Charlotte, North Carolina, but at least eight other places in North America– including our town. Although she was German, Charlotte was directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a member of the black branch of the Portuguese royal house. Whether her lineage affected her appearance is contested. Historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom says that her features, as seen in royal portraits, were conspicuously "negroid" and reports that they were noted by numerous contemporaries including the queen's personal physician, Baron Stockmar, who described her at age 84 as "small and crooked, with a true mulatto face." Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, explains that Charlotte's ancestor, Margarita de Castro, descended from Portuguese monarch Alfonso III and his mistress, Mourana Gil, an African of Moorish descent. The Wikipedia blog contains an ongoing argument, with one blogger writing, "This is precisely the kind of thing historians would love to cover up." Another objects, "The whole 'Queen Charlotte was black' thing is total garbage." A third answers, "It's apparent that racist sentiments seem to find their way into the simplist [sic] of argume nts." "An African ancestry doesn't mean she's black." "It is actually quite certain that all European royalty has a slight amount of black ancestry." And so on.
    [Show full text]
  • Royal Portraits and Sporting Pictures
    ROYAL PORTRAITS AND SPORTING PICTURES FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THEIR EXCELLENCIES THE GOVERNOR GENERAL AND LADY NORRIE AUCKLAND C TY ART GAL :RY ROYAL PORTRAITS AND SPORTING PICTURES FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THEIR EXCELLENCIES THE GOVERNOR GENERAL AND LADY NORRIE AUCKLAND CITY ART GALLERY during the FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS 1955 HIS is ONE OF THE RARE OCCASIONS when the general public > is given the opportunity or seeing a well chosen and well > balanced private collection or valuable pictures, which in the ' ordinary course of things would not be seen outside an English country house. So what a great pleasure, as well as a privilege, it is for us in Auckland to be allowed to see this selection of royal portraits and sporting pictures from the collections of Their Excellencies the Governor- General and Lady Norrie. A private collection should reflect its owner; and that is exactly what the collection now being exhibited does. Even if we knew nothing previously of the special interests of Their Excellencies, we would be aware immediately from these works, of Their Excellencies' deep love of British history and those activities of country life which have played such an important part in forming the character of rural England. The paintings which form part of these collections demonstrate also the artistic judgment and taste of Their Excellencies, for all of them have been chosen not only for the personages and events represented, but for their qualities as works of art as well. Their Excellencies' pictures have not been exhibited previously in New Zealand, and Auckland feels proud that the exhibition should form part of its 1955 Festival of the Arts, which has already become a dominant feature in the life of our City.
    [Show full text]
  • Casting Presence the Death Mask of Sir Thomas Lawrence As a Site of Remembrance
    Casting Presence The death mask of Sir Thomas Lawrence as a site of remembrance Emily Knight Formerly University of Oxford, United Kingdom ABSTRACT – When Sir Thomas Lawrence died in 1830, plaster casts were made of his face and right hand. The death mask was placed inside a wooden box with a lid that contained a mezzotint of the artist in life, his chalk, stubs, pencil, and a lock of his hair. This curious collection of objects formed a temporal bridge from past to present, operating as a site of remembrance that surpassed mere physical description. The experience of lifting a lid filled with traces of the artist’s life to reveal the death mask concealed beneath, presented the viewer with the absolute and unalterable finality of death. The various elements that contribute to the presentation of Lawrence’s death mask declare his existence through trace, touch and abject remains. They mark the point at which commemoration and deified celebration made way for a more encompassing and personal memorial on the brink of the Victorian Age. This article will discuss this key moment in early nineteenth-century visual culture, before photography emerged as the predominant mode of automatic reproduction. It will consider how this process of remembrance created an experience of death that was both haptic and optic, exact and emotional, thereby revealing the contemporary desire to be immersed in the contemplation of a life lived and a fascination with mankind’s inevitable end. journal of the lucas graduate conference | 29 castIng presence INTRODUCTION The death mask of Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) moulded into the shape of his head (Fig.
    [Show full text]
  • Sir Thomas Lawrence and the Waterloo Chamber
    Podcast transcript SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE AND THE WATERLOO CHAMBER Hello. And welcome to a podcast from Royal Collection Trust where we’ll hear about the dazzling portraits painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, gives a lecture at Windsor Castle about the magnificent Waterloo Chamber, which is dominated by Lawrence’s work. Hear the fascinating story of Lawrence’s travels across Europe to paint the celebrated figures from church and state who brought about the overthrow of Napoleon and championed diplomacy as the way to resolve future conflicts. The portraits capture a turning point in European history, but was this the new era of peace and co-operation they promised? Other talks, lectures and study days in our events programme can be found in the What’s On guide on our website. I’m going to be talking about, I suppose the, well definitely the Waterloo Chamber, and you might wonder why are we not there and it’s partly because I’m going to be looking at quite a lot of other material, much of it displayed in the Waterloo trail around Windsor Castle, so we couldn’t have absolutely just stood in the Waterloo Chamber, we would have needed to wander round. So you’re stuck with the standard lecture format, I’m afraid, but it means that you have to come back to see the Waterloo Chamber again, so it’s part of our marketing policy. And what I would like to do really is to introduce three characters, all of whom are in rough outline of the same generation.
    [Show full text]
  • Pictures and Prose Romantic Sensibility and the Great Plains in Catlin, Kane, and Miller
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 1986 PICTURES AND PROSE ROMANTIC SENSIBILITY AND THE GREAT PLAINS IN CATLIN, KANE, AND MILLER Ann Davis Robert Thacker St. Lawrence University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Davis, Ann and Thacker, Robert, "PICTURES AND PROSE ROMANTIC SENSIBILITY AND THE GREAT PLAINS IN CATLIN, KANE, AND MILLER" (1986). Great Plains Quarterly. 891. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/891 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. PICTURES AND PROSE ROMANTIC SENSIBILITY AND THE GREAT PLAINS IN CATLIN, KANE, AND MILLER ANN DAVIS AND ROBERT THACKER T he romantic movement in America, like of many of the artists who joined western that in Europe, was characterized by fondness expeditions are well known, of course. In for the exotic and observation of nature. So keeping with the descriptive nature of such the Great Plains and the peoples who lived missions, many of these artists kept written as there were favored topics of artists and writers well as visual records of their experiences. from the mid-1820s through the 1850s. How­ They shared the nineteenth-century penchant ever, at its height the American romantic for travel literature of all sorts. Yet despite the movement was challenged by a subtle but documentary aims and achievements of the persistent search for realism.
    [Show full text]
  • Sir Thomas LAWRENCE
    Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800 Online edition returned from India and facing impeachment on the finishing of crayons, (which I attempted,) was LAWRENCE, Sir Thomas such that from proof I found my receipts were more Bristol 13.IV.1769 – London 7.I.1830 proceedings for corruption; that they were important commissions for Lawrence is when I painted for two guineas and a half, than they Lawrence’s father, an innkeeper, went bankrupt were when I had five. At the same time that I inform in 1779, and the family moved from the Black evidenced by the multiple versions of the Impey Miss Hartley of this, I must blame my own Bear at Devizes to Oxford, settling the following pastel, one of which belonged to another East imprudence, in not making myself acquainted with year in Bath. Both cities offered a supply of India associate, Ynyr Burges, who commissioned the prices of the painters here, as it is my wish ever to sitters for the infant prodigy’s talents in his own and four further family portraits. be clear from the charge of presumption, which I fear portraiture. Already, in the Bath journal for In 1787 Lawrence moved from Bath to I have incurred. 20.XII.1779, verses appeared “To Master London, stopping at Salisbury on the way I am much honoured and obliged in the Duchess LAWRENCE, on seeing his very valuable and (Williams says that a number of crayons from Dowager of Beaufort, and Mrs. M. Townshend, interesting themselves in my behalf, and Madam, if most inimitable Copy of the Figure of HOPE that visit were still in the city in 1831).
    [Show full text]
  • Lowell Libson Limited British Art
    LOWELL LI BSON LTD 2 0 12 • LOWELL LIBSON LIMITED BRITISH ART 3 Clifford Street · London w1s 2lf +44 (0)20 7734 8686 · [email protected] www.lowell-libson.com LL 2012 text for Alta.indd 1 01/12/2011 13:05 LOWELL LIBSON LTD 2012 LL 2012 text for Alta.indd 2 01/12/2011 13:05 LL 2012 text for Alta.indd 3 01/12/2011 13:05 INDEX OF ARTISTS LOWELL LIBSON LTD Richard Parkes Bonington 96–101 Robert Carpenter 64 3 Clifford Street · London w1s 2lf John Constable 86–95 Telephone: +44 (0)20 7734 8686 Fax: +44 (0)20 7734 9997 David Cox 112–117 Email: [email protected] Richard Earlom 58 Website: www.lowell-libson.com Henry Edridge 73 The gallery is open by appointment, Monday to Friday James Jefferys 56 The entrance is in Old Burlington Street Thomas Gainsborough 18–31 Daniel Gardner 42 In 2012 our exhibition schedule is: Hubert Gravelot 12 Master Drawings New York Valentine Green 60 January 21–28 William Holman Hunt 118 George Lambert 16 TEFAF Maastricht Thomas Lawrence 76–79 March 16–25 John Linnell 102 Master Drawings London Thomas Malton 70 June 27 – July 5 Master of the Giants 56 John Hamilton Mortimer 54 Matthew William Peters 50 George Romney 32–41 Michael Angelo Rooker 68 George Stubbs 52 Peltro William Tomkins 44 Francis Towne 62 William Turner of Oxford 104–111 George Augustus Wallis 80 Cover: a sheet of 18th-century Italian paste paper (collection: Lowell Libson) Richard Westall 48, 84 John Michael Wright 8 Frontispiece: detail from Sir John Morshead George Romney (see pages 38–41) Joseph Wright of Derby 58–61 LL 2012 text for Alta.indd 4 01/12/2011 13:05 LL 2012 text for Alta.indd 5 01/12/2011 13:05 We are delighted to be able to publish some of the acquisitions – paintings, drawings, watercolours, prints and sculpture – which we have made over the last year.
    [Show full text]
  • PORTRAIT and FIGURE DRAWINGS 1750 to 1900
    BRITISH PORTRAIT AND FIGURE DRAWINGS 1750 to 1900 GUY PEPPIATT FINE ART Guy Peppiatt started his working life at Dulwich Picture Gallery before joining Sotheby’s British Pictures department in 1993. He soon specialised in early British drawings and watercolours and took over the running of Sotheby’s Topographical and Travel sales. Topographical views, whether they be of Britain or worldwide, have remained an abiding passion. Guy left Sotheby’s in early 2004 and has worked as a dealer since then, first based at home, and now in his new gallery on Mason’s Yard, St James’s, shared with the Old Master and European Drawings dealer Stephen Ongpin. He advises clients and museums on their collections, buys and sells on their behalf and can provide insurance valuations. Guy also vets a number of art fairs and is Chairman of the Vetting Committee for the Works on Paper Fair. Our first portrait and figure drawing catalogue, and exhibition, was in 2009 and this is our second. Portraits on paper were cheaper and quicker to produce than oils and the market for them expanded rapidly from the 1760s onwards. Pastels, often on a large scale, were particularly popular as their ‘wall power’ was close to that of an oil. Gardner, Hoare of Bath, Cotes and John Russell were the most successful pastellists of the time and all worked on a large scale. Hugh Douglas Hamilton and John Raphael Smith tended to specialise in smaller, often oval, portraits in pastel and it is little known that Lawrence started his career as a pastellist.
    [Show full text]