£1,500.00
1 in stock
The album of 89 pages contains 350 pencil, pen and ink and watercolour sketches plus one early photograph of an unidentified painting. Subjects are mostly rural with farm labourers, animals, dogs, cattle etc. There are interior scenes and studies of farming and kitchen implements, together with a few sensitive portraits of women and studies of Highlanders. Near the end of the album there are continental figure and landscape studies from various locations including, Dieppe, Rouen, Le Havre, and Venice. A few of the sketches are dated, most are from around 1833 but beginning in the 1820s then moving towards the continent in the 30s, 40s and 1850s. Overall the pictures are very well observed and technically accomplished.
Album: Height 11 3/4 in. Width 9 1/4 in. Depth 1 in.
Please enquire to view all pages of the album.
By the end of the eighteenth century, genre paintings in the Dutch manner were something of a Scotch speciality. David Wilkie (1785-1841) rose to be the most successful artist of his time and several genre artists among Wilkie’s own immediate contemporaries followed the fashion. The artist clearly had an interest in rural life much like William Shiels (1785-1857) who is best known as an animal painter but also painted and exhibited genre pictures.
