27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:40 Page 1 BRITISH DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS 2013 1 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:40 Page 2 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 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 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. 2 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:40 Page 3 BRITISH DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS 2013 Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm Weekends and evenings by appointment Guy Peppiatt Fine Art Ltd Riverwide House, 6 Mason’s Yard Duke Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6BU Tel: +44 (0) 20 7930 3839 Mobile:+44 (0) 7956 968284 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7839 1504 [email protected] www.peppiattfineart.co.uk 3 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:40 Page 4 1 George Romney (1734-1802) John Howard visiting the Lazaretto Numbered 86 in a later hand upper left, pencil on laid paper watermarked GR Similarly intense pencil drawings of the subject are in a sketchbook in the Huntington 15.7 by 19.1 cm., 6 by 7 ½ in. Library, San Marino which dates from October 1792. The album is numbered 3 which suggests that two other sketchbooks date from this month alone. Drawings John Howard (1726-1790) was a prison reformer who worked for the improvement of in the sketchbook have similar numberings apparently in the same hand as in the condition in British jails. He visited prisons all over the country and in 1778 he appeared present drawing. before a House of Commons committee to put forward his thoughts on how to improve them. Howard never sat for a portrait but Romney’s drawings of his prison visits are one of his principal projects of the 1780s and early 1790s. Romney focuses here on the cowering prisoners to the right of the image with their gaolers sketched in to the left. 4 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:40 Page 5 2 William Lock of Norbury the Younger (1767-1847) Lady Hamilton dancing the Tarantella Watercolour over pencil 36.9 by 28 cm., 14 ½ by 11 in. This shows the celebrated Lady Emma Hamilton (1765- 1815) dancing the tarantella. She was the mistress of Sir William Hamilton, the well-known collector and British envoy at Naples. She became famous for her ‘Attitudes’, which involved her dressing up and dancing and posing as figures from mythology to entertain Hamilton’s guests at his villa in Naples. In 1791 she married Hamilton but in the late 1790s she famously started an affair with Horatio Nelson while he was recuperating there after the Battle of the Nile. She and Nelson set up home together in London in 1800 and she gave birth to his child the following year. The affair lasted until Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Lady Hamilton is the figure on the right and is shown dancing the tarantella, a South Italian folk dance. William Lock the Younger’s father, William Lock (1732-1810) was a well- known patron and collector of contemporary artists and knew Sir William Hamilton. He met Emma in the summer of 1791 at the family house, Norbury Park in Surrey, and wrote to a friend ‘All the Statues & Pictures I have seen were in grace so inferior to Her, as scarce to deserve a look’ (Elizabeth and Mary Anson, Mary Hamilton , 1925, p.31). Lock the Younger was a promising artist and was encouraged by Henry Fuseli to go to Rome to study which he duly did leaving in the autumn of 1789 and not returning until the end of 1792 at the earliest. It is not known if he visited the Hamiltons in Naples but he is likely to have seen them when they passed through Rome on their way to Naples in late 1791. Another version of this drawing in pen and ink and pencil on exactly the same sized sheet is in the British Museum (1906,0719.4) and the subject was engraved and published by Mariano Bovi on 2nd May 1796. 5 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:40 Page 6 3 Joseph Farington, R.A. (1747-1821) and Robert Smirke (1752-1845) Miss Western and Mr Square – a Scene from Tom Jones Inscribed verso: Mifs Western & Square/Tom Jones 1790s with Farington drawing the landscape and Smirke the figures. They made Pen and brown ink and grey wash illustrations for five scenes from Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor for Boydell’s 20.9 by 28.7 cm., 8 by 11 ¼ in. Shakespeare Gallery (see Joseph Farington – Watercolours and Drawings , exhibition catalogue, 1977, nos.81-82, ill. pp.114-5). They also worked on illustrations for Tom Farington took an interest in the career of Robert Smirke and helped him become a Jones, the 1749 novel by Henry Fielding. A drawing of Square’s courtship of Mrs Blifil member of the Royal Academy. They collaborated on a number of projects in the by Farington and Smirke was sold at Sotheby’s on 10th March 1988, lot 39. 6 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:41 Page 7 4 Alexander Cozens (1717-1786) A Small Pool with Willow Trees Signed on original mount lower left: Alex.r Cozens. built up a highly successful practice as a drawing master and numbered members of the Brown washes on laid paper Royal Family among his pupils. His method of teaching using ‘blots’ became fashionable 20.8 by 29.1 cm., 8 by 11 ½ in. and he attracted the attention of William Beckford in the late 1770s. Provenance: He worked more in the Claudian tradition of romanticised landscapes rather than in With Leger Galleries, December 1982; the British topographical tradition of Paul Sandby. The present drawing has been dated By descent until 2012 to the 1770s. The combination of trees, a pool or body of water and foreground foliage are common in Cozens’s work (see ‘A Mountain Pool’, Tate Gallery, for a similar Alexander Cozens was born in Russia, the son of a shipbuilder and was sent to England composition). Trees remained a fascination for him – in 1771 he published ‘The Shape, to study painting in 1727. He was in Rome in 1746 and on his return to England was Skeleton and Foliage of Thirty-two Species of Trees.’ made drawing-master at Christ’s Hospital in 1749 and at Eton College in 1766. He 7 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:41 Page 8 5 Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) Crossing the Ford, Okehampton, Devon Signed lower right: Rowlandson. 1791 and inscribed lower left: Oakhampton Okehampton stands at the junction of the East and West Okement rivers in mid Pen and grey ink and watercolour over traces of pencil Devon just to the north of Dartmoor. A smaller view of Okehampton by Rowlandson 22 by 33 cm., 8 ¾ by 13 in. dated 1816 was sold at Christie’s on July 10 1984, lot 31. 8 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:41 Page 9 6 Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) A Recruiting Party outside the Sun Inn, Bodmin, Cornwall Pen and grey and black ink and watercolour over pencil and inns of the old centre of Bodmin and drew them a number of times. At least five With a signed pen and grey ink and pencil drawing verso versions of ‘The Arrival of the Stage Coach at Bodmin’ are known and the Sun Inn, 31 by 47.5 cm., 12 ¼ by 18 ¾ in. Bodmin appears in various drawings by Rowlandson, one in Bury Art Gallery and another ‘Bodmin, Cornwall: The Arrival of the Stage Coach’ which is dated to 1795 Provenance: (see John Riely, Rowlandson Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection , exhibition Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, 14th July 1994, lot 117; catalogue, 1978, no.58, p.42). Private collection until 2012 During the Napoleonic Wars recruiting parties would have been a common sight on Rowlandson was a frequent visitor to Bodmin to see his friend the banker Matthew the streets of England and especially in the West Country with the major naval base Michell who lived at nearby Hengar House. These visits lasted from the mid1790s at Plymouth nearby. until Michell’s death in 1817. Rowlandson seems to have admired the quaint houses 9 27441 GP Summer 2013_SR v5_Layout 1 22/04/2013 11:41 Page 10 7 Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) The Hotel d’Hambourg, Paris Inscribed by the artist lower right: Hotel D’Hambourgh a Paris Stylistically this dates from the mid1780s which suggests it may have been drawn on Pen and grey and brown ink and wash on laid paper with the artist’s original mount Rowlandson’s third visit to Paris in 1785. A hotel of this name was on Rue Jacob in the 18.8 by 29.5 cm., 7 ¼ by 11 ½ in. St Germain area of Paris at the time and Benjamin Franklin is known to have stayed there in the winter of 1776-77.