John Hamilton Mortimer, A.R.A.
(1740-1779)
Banditti in the Mountains
1770s
Pen and black ink
Signed with the artist’s monogram lower left: "JHM"
20 ½ x 15 inches (54 x 38 cm)
Sold in association with Andrew Clayton-Payne
Acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Provenance
Possibly Jane Mortimer, the artist’s wife
Christie’s, London, 25 March 1808, lot 59
Private Collection, UK
Cyril Fry
Sotheby’s, London, 7 July, 2021, lot 3
Exhibited
Possibly London, The Society of Artists, 1777, no 348
Kenwood House, London and Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, John Hamilton Mortimer, A.R.A., 1968, no.69
Hayward Art Gallery, London, Salvator Rosa, 1973, no.136
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, A Peculiarly English Art, 1994, no.42
Literature
Benedict Nicholson, John Hamilton Mortimer ARA, 1740-1779, exh. cat., 1968, no.69, p.38
Michael Kitson, Salvator Rosa, 1973, p.79
John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, London 1986, p.202, no.171, fig.298
David Solkin, 'Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire' in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.132 (illus.)
References
[1] William Hayley, A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (or An Essay on Painting) in Poems and Plays, Vol.1, 1788, p.26
[2] William Hayley, A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (or An Essay on Painting) in Poems and Plays, Vol.1, 1788, p.36
[3] William Hayley, A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (or An Essay on Painting) in Poems and Plays, Vol.1, 1788, p.76
[4] His death came just three months after his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy. It is generally believed that Mortimer died from tuberculosis
[5] See the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s note on Banditti in the Mountains (2023.97)
[6] John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, 1986, p.54
[7] John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, 1986, p.202
[8] David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’ in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.132
[9] David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’. in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.132. Discussing Banditti in the Mountains, Professor Solkin also remarks upon the 'dramatic wildness in both the figures and the setting'
[10] According to Solkin, Mortimer produced more than 60 drawings, paintings and prints of exotic bandits in the eight years leading to his death in 1779. David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’ in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.123
[11] See John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, 1986, p.51
[12] Andrew Ballantyne, Architecture, Landscape and Liberty: Richard Payne Knight and he Picturesque, 1997, p.305
[13] David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’ in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.123
[14] Martin Myrone, Bodybuilding: Reforming Masculinities in British Art, 1750–1810, 2005, p.141
[15] David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’ in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.136
[16] Paul Oppé, Memoirs of Thomas Jones, Penkerrig, Radnorshire, 1803, Walpole Society, Vol.32, 1946–8, pp.104-105
[17] John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, 1986, p.57
[18] 'To be really sublime, [landscape painting] should be, not only wild and broken, but rich and fertile; such as that of Salvator Rosa, whose ruined stems of gigantic trees proclaim at once the vigour of the vegetation, that has produced them, and of the tempests, that have shivered and broken them.’ Richard Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, 1805, p.368
[19] Christie’s, London, 25 March 1808, lot 59
[20] Ben Luke, "Salvatore Rosa, Where the Wild Things Are”, London Evening Standard, 5 April 2012, Exhibition Review
[21] Ben Luke, “Salvatore Rosa, Where the Wild Things Are”, London Evening Standard, 5 April 2012, Exhibition Review
In William Hayley's 1778 encomium to George Romney, A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (or An Essay on Painting), the second epistle offers a 'slight sketch of the most eminent living artists in England,' [1] in which 'the rapid MORTIMER, of Spirit wild, Imagination's dear and daring Child' [2] is described in Hayley’s notes as 'alone sufficient to reflect a considerable lustre on this early [British] school.' [3] Only a year later, Mortimer died at the young age of 38. [4] In the final fifteen years of his life 'Mortimer’s imagination shaped [and defined] British art,' [5] and part of his singular artistic supremacy can be understood by what John Sunderland observed in Mortimer, as 'one of the first artists to move away from the conventional subjects of the Renaissance tradition in a search for novelty and particularly a greater expressiveness in his art. He sought like Fuseli, for psychological and physical sensationalism, for subjects which would create an immediate effect of horror or violence or extremes of passion…he is amongst the earliest of the Romantic artists to try to upset the order and harmony of conventional academic art. He works away from the mainstream, towards the depiction of aspects of human nature which are extreme and irrational.' [6]
This late, well-known drawing, Banditti in the Mountains, which may have been exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1777, is an oversize dizzying exercise in virtuoso draughtsmanship and unique in Mortimer’s surviving oeuvre. The picture has been described by Sunderland as 'unusually highly finished' [7] and by David Solkin as a 'fantasy of freedom.' [8] The banditti, according to Solkin, in direct reference to Banditti in the Mountains, represent and embody the 'freedom of individuals who are subject to no rules or laws, who do what they choose when they choose, beholden only to the prompting of their passions.' [9] Banditti imagery in British art of this period, explored by artists such as Joseph Wright of Derby and Philippe James de Loutherbourg, has inspired ongoing and diverse academic interpretations. To Richard Payne Knight, who incidentally owned some of Mortimer’s greatest banditti drawings, [11] they emblematised ideas of creative and sexual liberty and independence, 'Freedom was the central issue in Knight’s aesthetics, freedom of expression in the absence of formal rules would give rise to the best possible works of all kinds.' [12] Banditti came to represent to connoisseur and artist alike: humans of pre-moral sentiment, recreant 'men of violence,' [13] Romantic lawless brigands, ‘equally rapist and loving husband,’ [14] and unbridled, unleashed exotic ‘fantasies of primitive masculinity.’ [15] To the artists Thomas Jones and Francis Towne, banditti proved to be little more than thuggish bullies. Taking a break from sketching for some 'cold fowl…and a flask of wine' on 8 March 1782 near the Castle of Baiae on the northwest shore of the Gulf of Naples, the artists came to a near-fatal end when one of two 'Gentlemen Soldiers,' bristled by the supposed affrontery of the Englishmen, 'seized [Thomas Jones] by the throat' and drew his broadsword to the artist's gullet. Jones recorded that 'Towne was almost frightened to death.' [16] As Sunderland wryly says of the episode 'figures which are attractive in art are [often] not so in reality.' [17]
Banditti in the Mountains makes a clear allusion to the art of the Italian artist Salvator Rosa, reflecting an influence that is entirely characteristic of Mortimer’s designs in the final decade of his life. [18] Indeed, the drawing was described in the Christie’s sale catalogue of 1808 as ‘very spirited…a grand upright landscape with Banditti, in the style of Sal. [Salvator] Rosa’. [19] A critic writing as recently as 2012 ventured that 'it may not be foolish to assert that Rosa is the most important Italian in the history of British art.' [20] Contrary to what one might assume — given Rosa’s diminished recognition today — the critic goes on to explain that 'to the Grand Tour [Rosa] contributed the myths of landscapes too terrible to be traversed by man, and banditti who robbed, raped and murdered all who made the attempt. To the history of landscape painting he offered, not the sublimities of Claude, but the hostile wilderness, the barren rock, the uprooted tree, the dragon's cave, where man is futile and irrelevant. In Italy, Magnasco was his heir, in Britain James Barry, Joseph Wright, Fuseli, Loutherbourg, Mortimer, Thomas Jones and, above all, John Martin.' [21] The present drawing was exhibited in the Hayward Gallery’s 1973 Salvator Rosa exhibition.
John Hamilton Mortimer, A.R.A.
(1740-1779)
Banditti in the Mountains
1770s
Pen and black ink
Signed with the artist’s monogram lower left: "JHM"
20 ½ x 15 inches (54 x 38 cm)
Sold in association with Andrew Clayton-Payne
Acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Provenance
Possibly Jane Mortimer, the artist’s wife
Christie’s, London, 25 March 1808, lot 59
Private Collection, UK
Cyril Fry
Sotheby’s, London, 7 July, 2021, lot 3
Exhibited
Possibly London, The Society of Artists, 1777, no 348
Kenwood House, London and Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, John Hamilton Mortimer, A.R.A., 1968, no.69
Hayward Art Gallery, London, Salvator Rosa, 1973, no.136
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, A Peculiarly English Art, 1994, no.42
Literature
Benedict Nicholson, John Hamilton Mortimer ARA, 1740-1779, exh. cat., 1968, no.69, p.38
Michael Kitson, Salvator Rosa, 1973, p.79
John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, London 1986, p.202, no.171, fig.298
David Solkin, 'Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire' in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.132 (illus.)
References
[1] William Hayley, A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (or An Essay on Painting) in Poems and Plays, Vol.1, 1788, p.26
[2] William Hayley, A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (or An Essay on Painting) in Poems and Plays, Vol.1, 1788, p.36
[3] William Hayley, A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (or An Essay on Painting) in Poems and Plays, Vol.1, 1788, p.76
[4] His death came just three months after his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy. It is generally believed that Mortimer died from tuberculosis
[5] See the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s note on Banditti in the Mountains (2023.97)
[6] John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, 1986, p.54
[7] John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, 1986, p.202
[8] David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’ in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.132
[9] David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’. in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.132. Discussing Banditti in the Mountains, Professor Solkin also remarks upon the 'dramatic wildness in both the figures and the setting'
[10] According to Solkin, Mortimer produced more than 60 drawings, paintings and prints of exotic bandits in the eight years leading to his death in 1779. David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’ in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.123
[11] See John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, 1986, p.51
[12] Andrew Ballantyne, Architecture, Landscape and Liberty: Richard Payne Knight and he Picturesque, 1997, p.305
[13] David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’ in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.123
[14] Martin Myrone, Bodybuilding: Reforming Masculinities in British Art, 1750–1810, 2005, p.141
[15] David Solkin, ‘Conquest, usurpation, wealth, luxury, famine’: Mortimer’s Banditti and the Anxieties of Empire’ in T. Barringer, G. Quilley, & D. Fordham (eds.), Art and the British Empire, 2006, p.136
[16] Paul Oppé, Memoirs of Thomas Jones, Penkerrig, Radnorshire, 1803, Walpole Society, Vol.32, 1946–8, pp.104-105
[17] John Sunderland, John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works, Walpole Society, Vol.52, 1986, p.57
[18] 'To be really sublime, [landscape painting] should be, not only wild and broken, but rich and fertile; such as that of Salvator Rosa, whose ruined stems of gigantic trees proclaim at once the vigour of the vegetation, that has produced them, and of the tempests, that have shivered and broken them.’ Richard Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, 1805, p.368
[19] Christie’s, London, 25 March 1808, lot 59
[20] Ben Luke, "Salvatore Rosa, Where the Wild Things Are”, London Evening Standard, 5 April 2012, Exhibition Review
[21] Ben Luke, “Salvatore Rosa, Where the Wild Things Are”, London Evening Standard, 5 April 2012, Exhibition Review
In William Hayley's 1778 encomium to George Romney, A Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter (or An Essay on Painting), the second epistle offers a 'slight sketch of the most eminent living artists in England,' [1] in which 'the rapid MORTIMER, of Spirit wild, Imagination's dear and daring Child' [2] is described in Hayley’s notes as 'alone sufficient to reflect a considerable lustre on this early [British] school.' [3] Only a year later, Mortimer died at the young age of 38. [4] In the final fifteen years of his life 'Mortimer’s imagination shaped [and defined] British art,' [5] and part of his singular artistic supremacy can be understood by what John Sunderland observed in Mortimer, as 'one of the first artists to move away from the conventional subjects of the Renaissance tradition in a search for novelty and particularly a greater expressiveness in his art. He sought like Fuseli, for psychological and physical sensationalism, for subjects which would create an immediate effect of horror or violence or extremes of passion…he is amongst the earliest of the Romantic artists to try to upset the order and harmony of conventional academic art. He works away from the mainstream, towards the depiction of aspects of human nature which are extreme and irrational.' [6]
This late, well-known drawing, Banditti in the Mountains, which may have been exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1777, is an oversize dizzying exercise in virtuoso draughtsmanship and unique in Mortimer’s surviving oeuvre. The picture has been described by Sunderland as 'unusually highly finished' [7] and by David Solkin as a 'fantasy of freedom.' [8] The banditti, according to Solkin, in direct reference to Banditti in the Mountains, represent and embody the 'freedom of individuals who are subject to no rules or laws, who do what they choose when they choose, beholden only to the prompting of their passions.' [9] Banditti imagery in British art of this period, explored by artists such as Joseph Wright of Derby and Philippe James de Loutherbourg, has inspired ongoing and diverse academic interpretations. To Richard Payne Knight, who incidentally owned some of Mortimer’s greatest banditti drawings, [11] they emblematised ideas of creative and sexual liberty and independence, 'Freedom was the central issue in Knight’s aesthetics, freedom of expression in the absence of formal rules would give rise to the best possible works of all kinds.' [12] Banditti came to represent to connoisseur and artist alike: humans of pre-moral sentiment, recreant 'men of violence,' [13] Romantic lawless brigands, ‘equally rapist and loving husband,’ [14] and unbridled, unleashed exotic ‘fantasies of primitive masculinity.’ [15] To the artists Thomas Jones and Francis Towne, banditti proved to be little more than thuggish bullies. Taking a break from sketching for some 'cold fowl…and a flask of wine' on 8 March 1782 near the Castle of Baiae on the northwest shore of the Gulf of Naples, the artists came to a near-fatal end when one of two 'Gentlemen Soldiers,' bristled by the supposed affrontery of the Englishmen, 'seized [Thomas Jones] by the throat' and drew his broadsword to the artist's gullet. Jones recorded that 'Towne was almost frightened to death.' [16] As Sunderland wryly says of the episode 'figures which are attractive in art are [often] not so in reality.' [17]
Banditti in the Mountains makes a clear allusion to the art of the Italian artist Salvator Rosa, reflecting an influence that is entirely characteristic of Mortimer’s designs in the final decade of his life. [18] Indeed, the drawing was described in the Christie’s sale catalogue of 1808 as ‘very spirited…a grand upright landscape with Banditti, in the style of Sal. [Salvator] Rosa’. [19] A critic writing as recently as 2012 ventured that 'it may not be foolish to assert that Rosa is the most important Italian in the history of British art.' [20] Contrary to what one might assume — given Rosa’s diminished recognition today — the critic goes on to explain that 'to the Grand Tour [Rosa] contributed the myths of landscapes too terrible to be traversed by man, and banditti who robbed, raped and murdered all who made the attempt. To the history of landscape painting he offered, not the sublimities of Claude, but the hostile wilderness, the barren rock, the uprooted tree, the dragon's cave, where man is futile and irrelevant. In Italy, Magnasco was his heir, in Britain James Barry, Joseph Wright, Fuseli, Loutherbourg, Mortimer, Thomas Jones and, above all, John Martin.' [21] The present drawing was exhibited in the Hayward Gallery’s 1973 Salvator Rosa exhibition.