VIII. Skies and Effects

105. Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes Toulouse 1750 – 1819 Paris In his treatise Élémens de perspective, Valenciennes recommended that painters begin with the sky when making open-air oil sketches, as it is the main source of light in nature and sets the overall tone of a landscape. This quickly painted cloud study is part of a group executed by the artist (…)
106. Jean-Honoré Fragonard Grasse 1732 – 1806 Paris One of the earliest works in the exhibition, Mountain Landscape at Sunset is among the rare surviving oil studies by Fragonard that could plausibly have been painted in the open air. There is an evident speed and spontaneity to the brushwork, and a recent author described it as having the (…)
107. Anonymous French, 18^th century Although the maker of this study of low clouds hanging over a wooded valley remains anonymous, it probably dates to the late eighteenth century. This is suggested by the slight decorative touch in the clouds and their cotton-like texture, which gives the impression they have been dusted with an (…)
108. Johann Jakob Frey Basel 1813 – 1865 Frascati, Rome The Swiss painter Johann Jakob Frey was the son of a copper engraver, and settled in Rome in 1836 after brief studies in Paris and Munich. He travelled widely throughout the Italian countryside, producing plein air oil studies to inform the landscapes he sold to a steady market of international (…)
109. Johann Jakob Frey Basel 1813 – 1865 Frascati, Rome The Swiss painter Johann Jakob Frey was the son of a copper engraver, and settled in Rome in 1836 after brief studies in Paris and Munich. He travelled widely throughout the Italian countryside, producing plein air oil studies to inform the landscapes he sold to a steady market of international (…)
110. Johann Jakob Frey Basel 1813 – 1865 Frascati, Rome The Swiss painter Johann Jakob Frey was the son of a copper engraver, and settled in Rome in 1836 after brief studies in Paris and Munich. He travelled widely throughout the Italian countryside, producing plein air oil studies to inform the landscapes he sold to a steady market of international (…)
111. Johann Jakob Frey Basel 1813 – 1865 Frascati, Rome The Swiss painter Johann Jakob Frey was the son of a copper engraver, and settled in Rome in 1836 after brief studies in Paris and Munich. He travelled widely throughout the Italian countryside, producing plein air oil studies to inform the landscapes he sold to a steady market of international (…)
112. John Constable East Bergholt 1776 – 1837 London A systematic student of the sky, John Constable produced dozens of oil sketches of clouds and atmospheric phenomena, mostly painted in Hampstead between 1821-22. The artist called these plein air painterly exercises “skying”, and sought to capture the variety of light effects caused by the (…)
113. John Constable East Bergholt 1776 – 1837 London A systematic student of the sky, John Constable produced dozens of oil sketches of clouds and atmospheric phenomena, mostly painted in Hampstead between 1821-22. The artist called these plein air painterly exercises “skying”, and sought to capture the variety of light effects caused by the (…)
114. Anton Sminck Pitloo Arnhem 1790 – 1837 Naples These pendants (cat. 114 and 115) representing a sunrise and a sunset in an Italian landscape demonstrate Pitloo’s wonderful sensitivity for fleeting effects of light and colour. The studies are signed, a rarity in the artist’s oeuvre. In both works, a strip of clear light blue indicates the sea (…)
115. Anton Sminck Pitloo Arnhem 1790 – 1837 Naples These pendants (cat. 114 and 115) representing a sunrise and a sunset in an Italian landscape demonstrate Pitloo’s wonderful sensitivity for fleeting effects of light and colour. The studies are signed, a rarity in the artist’s oeuvre. In both works, a strip of clear light blue indicates the sea (…)
116. Georges Michel Paris 1763 – 1843 Paris Known as the “Ruisdael of Montmartre”, George Michel was greatly influenced by the Dutch landscape painters of the seventeenth century and even worked restoring the collection of Netherlandish paintings of the Louvre. Despite never achieving much success during his lifetime, Michel was admired (…)
117. Simon Denis Antwerp 1755 – 1813 Naples A Tivoly, Peint de nuit (In Tivoli, painted at night) is written on the back of this rather spectacular view of a tempest by Simon Denis, next to an abbreviation of his name and the number 50. The sketch is part of a group of 160 numbered open-air studies which Denis kept in his studio and (…)
118. Giuseppe de Nittis Barletta 1846 – 1884 Saint-Germain-en-Laye Expelled from the Academy in Naples due to unruly behaviour, Giuseppe de Nittis spent much of his early years working in nature. In his memoirs, the artist describes his routine, waking up before dawn to spend his days painting in the open air. A keen observer of atmospheric effects, he wrote (…)
119. Anonymous French, 19^th century
120. Carl Frederik Aagaard Odense 1833 – 1895 Copenhagen Aagaard moved to Copenhagen at the age of nineteen to study printmaking at the Academy, under the guidance of his older brother who specialized in woodcuts. There he also studied decorative painting, but soon abandoned classes at the Academy to take up landscape painting and trained under P.C. (…)
121. Anonymous, possibly Simon Denis Antwerp 1755 – 1813 Naples Unsigned oil sketches are notoriously difficult to attribute, and cloud studies such as these prove particularly challenging. The name Simon Denis is inscribed on the back of the thin wooden panel on which this fragment of sky was skilfully and rapidly painted, but this attribution is hard to (…)
122. Jean-Charles Rémond Paris 1795 – 1875 Paris Rémond studied alongside Michallon (cat. 21) at the École des Beaux-Arts and, after winning the Prix de Rome for historical landscape, lived as a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome between 1822-25. Upon his return to France he published a series of lithographs based on his Italian (…)
123. Anton Melbye Copenhagen 1818 – 1875 Paris Initially an apprentice shipbuilder, Melbye attended the Academy in Copenhagen between 1838-39, while simultaneously taking private lessons from Eckersberg. He would go on to specialize in marine painting, achieving international recognition with naval scenes characterised by dramatic effects of (…)
124. Alexandre Calame Vevey 1810 – 1864 Menton Calame first visited the Bernese Alps in the summer of 1835, returning often until the 1860s. He was particularly taken with the untamed beauty of Handeck (Handegg) and the Grimsel Pass, and painted numerous views of its steep valleys, waterfalls and rugged mountaintops. Storm at Handeck is (…)
125. Rosa Bonheur Bordeaux 1822 – 1899 Thomery, Seine-et-Marne One of only two female artists included in this exhibition, the animal painter Rosa Bonheur achieved such celebrity during her lifetime that by the 1860s a doll had been made in her image, styled with cropped hair and the trousers which she could only wear thanks to a cross-dressing permit from (…)
126. Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy Paris 1757–1841 Jouy-en-Josas Alongside his contemporaries Valenciennes and Bidauld, Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy was a member of the first generation of painters of paysages historiques who regularly worked in the open air. In France, he painted in Paris and its surroundings, Lyon, the Auvergne and the Savoy. He travelled to (…)
127. Robert Zünd Lucerne 1827 – 1909 Lucerne Incised directly into the still-wet paint, the date 18 July 54 suggests that Robert Zünd completed this study in a single day. With astonishing skill in the depiction of light, the artist captures the dramatic mood of an approaching summer storm. A tiny shepherd rushes towards a group of trees, (…)
128. Charles Nègre Grasse 1820 – 1880 Grasse Mostly known as a photographer, Charles Nègre features among the pioneers of the technique and is seen as a precursor of street photography. In describing photographs he took in the south of France in August 1852, Nègre wrote that, being a painter himself, he kept painters in mind and: “Wherever (…)
129. Charles Louis Mozin, attributed to Paris 1806 – 1862 Trouville-sur-Mer Monogrammed C. L. M. at lower left, this view of Paris is attributed to Charles Louis Mozin. The whole scene is covered in a veil of fog and painted thinly on canvas, with the exception of the sun – an impasto of white paint which breaks through the clouds – and its reflexion on the water. The (…)
130. William Holman Hunt London 1827 – 1910 London Painting directly from nature was a guiding principle of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which William Holman Hunt was a founding member. Among its stated aims, we find: “1, To have genuine ideas to express; 2, to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them […]”. Much of (…)
131. Willem Witsen Amsterdam 1860 – 1923 Amsterdam The Dutch painter, printmaker and photographer Willem Witsen lived in London for a couple of years between October 1888 and January 1891. There, he made a series of paintings, etchings and watercolours in which he depicted close-ups of monumental architecture, often in an ethereal, moody (…)