THE SPIRIT &FORCE OF ART Drawing in Britain 1600–1750 THE SPIRIT & FORCE OF ART: DRAWING IN BRITAIN 1600–1750 3 Clifford Street, London 20 June to 6 July 2018 London London Art Week 29 June to 6 July 2018 new york TeFAF New York Fall 27 to 31 October 2018 THE SPIRIT &FORCE OF ART Drawing in Britain 1600–1750 Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd London 2018 Contents Index of Artists 6 Foreword Lowell Libson 7 Introduction Jonny Yarker 8 3 Clifford Street · London w1S 2LF +44 (0)20 7734 8686 ‘The spirit and force of art’: [email protected] Defining Drawing in England, 1600–1750 www.libson-yarker.com Richard Stephens 11 Lowell Libson [email protected] A Lost Art? Collecting Early British Drawings Jonny Yarker & their Critical Fate [email protected] Richard Stephens and Jonny Yarker 33 Cressida St Aubyn [email protected] CATALoGUe Published by Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd 2018 I Towards an English School 41 Text and publication © Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd All rights reserved II Academies 69 ISBn 978 1 9999783 1 0 Designed by Dalrymple III The Rise of the Sketch 85 Set in Mário Feliciano’s Rongel type Photography by Rodney Todd-White & Son Ltd VI From Prospect to Landscape 101 Colour reproduction by Altaimage Ltd Printed in Belgium by Albe De Coker V From Ceiling to Exhibition Room: the Progress of History Painting 127 VI Face Painting 147 VII ‘A noble, delightful and useful art’: Drawings by Antiquarians, Amateurs and Artisans 169 VIII The Age of Hogarth 181 Notes and References 199 Index of Artists Foreword References are to catalogue numbers Laguerre, Louis 47 We are delighted to publish this catalogue which represents the culmination of over ten years of gathering these rare drawings which were created before the ‘Golden Age’ Amigoni, Jacopo 58 Laroon, Marcellus 73 of British watercolours and which demonstrate the formation of an identifiable ‘British’ Baron, Bernard 74 Laroon, Marcellus, the younger 84 School. The interaction of and, indeed, reliance on artists from Continental Europe Boit, Charles 54 Le Piper, Francis 17 was vital in the development of what was to become an influential and identifiable national artistic aesthetic. This exhibition represents a survey based on works largely Boitard, Louis Pierre 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83 Lely, Sir Peter 7, 52 produced from about 1600 to the 1750s. No commercial exercise of this kind, especially Buck, Samuel 38 Lens, Bernard 12, 15, 49 given the rarity of this material, is ever going to be comprehensive but it does give us a broad and representative narrative of artistic activity in England during this period as Byng, Edward 56, 57 Luttrell, Edward 10 well as a rare opportunity for collectors and museums to acquire significant works in Byron, William 67 Marot, Daniel 46 this area. Many of the surviving drawings from this period are now held in museum collec- Carwitham, Thomas 16 Oliver, Isaac 2 tions, notably at the British Museum, the Huntington Art Gallery and Library and the Chéron, Louis 13 Oliver, Peter 3 Yale Center for British Art and given the strange cyclical nature of fashion, availability and the consequent dynamics of trends in academic research, little work has been Cozens, Alexander 41 Overbeek, Michel van 30 done in this area since the 1960s, until recently. This catalogue is evidence of a growing Dahl, Michael 53 Peacham, Henry 1 understanding and enthusiasm for this material. Diepenbeeck, Abraham van 5 Place, Francis 32, 33, 34 I am extremely grateful to Jonny Yarker for having taken on this project at a time when I had already gathered quite a number of drawings. It was a stroke of genius English School 60, 35 Richardson, Jonathan Senior 19 on his part to have recruited our mutual friend Richard Stephens to co-author this Esselens, Jacob 31 Rigaud, Jacques 37 catalogue. Their rationalisation of our accumulated holdings and the fascinating results of their research is, to my mind, truly impressive. This catalogue would not have been Forster, Thomas 61–64 Rysbrack, John Michael 28, 29, 51 possible without the most enormous efforts: Jonny and Richard’s work is self-evident, Geekie, Alexander 9, 68 Savage, John 72 however, this project could not have happened without the skills and dedication of Cressida St Aubyn who has managed to keep both us and this catalogue on track. Goupy, Joseph 40 Seamer, Col. James 20, 21 This catalogue is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend William Drummond, Gravelot, Hubert– François 76 Seymour, James 22, 23, 24, 25 through whose hands many of these drawings had at one time passed. Greenhill, John 8 Talman, John 65 LoweLL LIBSon Hayman, Francis 77 Thornhill, Sir James 11, 18, 36, 43, 44, 45, 48 Heckel, Augustus 39 Tilson, Henry 59 Johnson, Thomas 70, 71 Velde the Younger, Willem van de 6 Jones, Inigo 4 Vanderbank, John 14, 26, 27 Kent, William 50, 69 Vertue George 66 Kneller, Sir Godfrey 55 Wilson, Richard 42 6 · drAwInG In Britain 1600–1750 The SpIrIT And ForCe oF ArT · 7 Introduction When Robert Wark published Early British Drawings in the Huntington Collection: existed before the Interregnum. As Junius noted, Lord Arundel: ‘out of his noble and 1600–1750 in 1969, Ellis Waterhouse noted in a review in The Art Bulletin that there art-cherishing minde, doth at this present expose these jewells of art to the publike view were few institutions which had a concentration of such material. Other than the large in the Academie at Arundell house’. group of drawings in the British Museum, he noted, it is: Two drapery studies [cat.7 and cat.52] give visual evidence to Charles Beale’s contem- porary account of Peter Lely painting his son’s portrait: ‘Mr Lely dead coloured my son a field of collecting so unfashionable that, during the last fifty years, they have almost all passed Charles picture … he took a drawing upon paper after an Indian gown which he had into the hands of a few enthusiastic and astute private collectors in London – Randall Davies, put on his back, in order to the finishing of the Drapery of it.’ The striking red chalk Sir Robert Witt, A. P. Oppé, L.G. Duke, Gilbert Davis and Sir Bruce Ingram – who were all life drawing by Bernard Lens [cat.12] offers unprecedented evidence for the ambitious of course interested in later British drawings, but did give a good deal of attention to the period activities of the Great Queen Street Academy in its first decade. Groups of drawings before 1750. show the pre-history of landscape painting, pointing to the diverse use of watercolour Waterhouse was writing at the end of what we now think of as a ‘Golden Age’ of before the rise of Paul Sandby. Whilst a series of sheets demonstrate the intellectual collecting and scholarship in the field. Since 1969 there has been a steady decline in – and visual – ambition of painters producing historical compositions long before the interest. This exhibition, and its accompanying catalogue, offer an opportunity to look advent of London’s exhibition societies. Preparing this exhibition has thrown into relief a afresh at works that have been surprisingly neglected by the market and collectors, both sense that we constantly undervalue the role drawings played in the life of early modern private and institutional. We began to assemble material for this project over a decade Britain and in the development of the arts in particular. ago, realising, as Witt, Oppé, Duke and Ingram had, that drawings made in Britain We are enormously grateful to the community of scholars who continue to work in, to before 1750 are frequently not only very beautiful, but tell an important story about quote Waterhouse again, this ‘unfashionable’ area. We have benefitted enormously from the development of British art in the century and a half before the foundation of the the research of Jeremy Wood, who was the first to seriously construct the oeuvre of Peter Royal Academy. The continuity of our aims is neatly underscored by the presence in the Oliver as recently as 1998. Gordon Higgott was kind enough to advise on our Inigo Jones exhibition of drawings from several of these ‘enthusiastic and astute…collectors’: three sheet. Catherine MacLeod and Diana Dethloff have shared their knowledge of Lely and belonged to Robert Witt, eight to Leonard Duke and five to Sir Bruce Ingram the bulk beyond. Neil Jeffares, with characteristic generosity, has discussed the pastels in this of whose collections are now in museums. catalogue. Richard Johns has discussed van de Velde and James Thornhill and Kim Sloan This exhibition makes no claims at being a comprehensive survey of drawing made and her colleagues at the British Museum have been unstinting in their encouragement in the period, but it is a group, as Richard Stephens explains in his essay, that forms a for our project. representative survey of the surviving material and correlates with his statistical analysis I have been very lucky to work with Richard Stephens, whose website The Art World in of early British drawings held in public collections. As such, it offers powerful evidence Britain 1660–1735 is quietly transforming the research landscape of the period by provid- for the use of drawings in Britain between 1600 and 1750. ing unprecedented access to a mass of data including auction catalogues, newspaper Taking the recent neglect of early British drawings as our starting point, this advertisements, inventories and more. The catalogue is a testament to his wide-ranging catalogue was conceived as a way of thinking about the role of specific drawings and scholarship, knowledge and enthusiasm.