Home Online catalogues True to Nature. Open-air Painting 1780-1870 104. Thomas Fearnley Frederikshald, now Halden 1802 – 1842 Munich Loggia in Sorrento, 1834 A protégé of Johan Christian Dahl, the Norwegian painter Thomas Fearnley (his grandfather was a Yorkshireman) had a peripatetic career, and travelled and sketched widely throughout Europe before his untimely death at the age of thirty-nine. After studying in Oslo and Copenhagen, he moved to Dresden where he worked alongside Dahl for 18 months, and adopted the master’s broad, free handling of paint in his plein air landscapes. He spent three years in Italy between 1832-35, and this view of a loggia in Sorrento was probably painted in the summer of 1834, around June when the artist visited Capri. In this relatively large study, Fearnley captured the various hues of grey resulting from the interplay of light and shade on the bright white walls. The figure of the artist in the background, seen at work with a paint-box on his lap, has been identified as Charles West Cope (1811–1890), who would later be Fearnley’s travel companion in the Lake District, in north-west England. Cope’s published Reminiscences give many humorous accounts of Fearnley, who is described as “a ceaseless source of merriment.”1 1Charles West Cope, Reminiscences, London, 1891, p 87.
A protégé of Johan Christian Dahl, the Norwegian painter Thomas Fearnley (his grandfather was a Yorkshireman) had a peripatetic career, and travelled and sketched widely throughout Europe before his untimely death at the age of thirty-nine. After studying in Oslo and Copenhagen, he moved to Dresden where he worked alongside Dahl for 18 months, and adopted the master’s broad, free handling of paint in his plein air landscapes. He spent three years in Italy between 1832-35, and this view of a loggia in Sorrento was probably painted in the summer of 1834, around June when the artist visited Capri. In this relatively large study, Fearnley captured the various hues of grey resulting from the interplay of light and shade on the bright white walls. The figure of the artist in the background, seen at work with a paint-box on his lap, has been identified as Charles West Cope (1811–1890), who would later be Fearnley’s travel companion in the Lake District, in north-west England. Cope’s published Reminiscences give many humorous accounts of Fearnley, who is described as “a ceaseless source of merriment.”1 1Charles West Cope, Reminiscences, London, 1891, p 87.