John White Abbott
(1763-1851)
Langdale Pikes from Windermere
1791
Inscribed, signed and dated on the reverse:
“The Langdale Pikes from Windermere near Lowood, JWA. July 11. 1791”
Pencil and ink and watercolour
19 x 24 cm
Acquired by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Sold in association with Andrew Clayton-Payne
Provenance
Private Collection, UK
Jeremy Maas, 1979
Private Collection, UK
References
[1] John White Abbott was 28 years old in 1791. Little but the barest of outlines are known about his life
[2] In 1803, John Downman, who had family living in Devon, remarked to Joseph Farington over tea, that John White Abbott 'only paints by snatches, though by choice he would always be so employed.’ Joseph Farington, James Greig (ed.), The Farington Diary, Vol.II, 1923, p.258
[3] Although the number on the back of the present watercolour appears to have been removed at some point, it is likely that the correct number is either ‘58’ or ‘59’. A watercolour in the V&A numbered ‘60’ depicts The Langdale Pikes from Low-wood and was painted the day after the present watercolour on 12 July. Another work from the series in the V&A, The Queen of Patterdale, numbered ‘53’, was painted three days earlier, on 8 July
[4] Some sheets are cut down to 5 x 15 cm, whereas others from the series are made from multiple sheets joined together. A watercolour of Ullswater, for instance, now in the RISD Museum (71.153.54) is made from three sheets pasted together
[5] A watercolour in the V&A, A Subterranean Passage to the Quarry at Liverpool (17 July 1791), is numbered ‘73’, which appears to be the final number currently documented, though more works may survive. It belongs to a group of six watercolours from the 1791 tour, donated to the museum in 1924 by Mrs Fanny Douglas, John White Abbott’s granddaughter
[6] Philip Larkin, “Poem II”, The North Ship, beginning with, ‘This was your place of birth, this daytime palace’, 1945
[7] Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Skylark”, Prometheus Unbound, 1820
[8] ‘Although his later drawings relied more heavily on the pen, in 1791 Abbott handled watercolour in a painterly fashion especially close to Towne's own views of the Lake District.’ Timothy Wilcox, Francis Towne, 1997, p.156
[9] 'Abbott mastered completely, and at first seldom departed from, Towne's earlier precision and delicacy of pen outline, his flat washes, his patterning of buildings, foliage, or rocks, his crinkled line for foliage, and his split and frilled watercourses. He has the same tricks of foreground emphasis, and when he uses colours he has precisely Towne's choice of rather dry colouring.’ A. P. Oppé, “JOHN WHITE ABBOTT OF EXETER (1763-1851)”, The Volume of the Walpole Society, Vol.13, 1924, p.76
This luminous watercolour, which glows with flowing colour, dates from John White Abbott’s only known tour outside the West Country, during which he sketched in Scotland, the Lake District, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Warwickshire. [1] In the summer of 1791, over a period of six weeks, Abbott left his native Devon (where he worked as a surgeon and apothecary in Exeter) for the north of England. [2] Excluding a handful of etchings, the watercolours from this tour are the earliest known works by Abbott to survive and the only group of works by him which are numbered, inscribed and dated - no other known body of his work is treated in this manner. [3] The series of watercolours, numbering around 80 sheets and mostly of sketchbook-sized dimensions (19 x 24 cm), [4] consistently exhibit the striking clarity and economy that distinguished the work of Abbott and his teacher Francis Towne. [5]
The sky ‘shines petal-soft’ [6] in Langdale Pikes from Windermere and the vaporous colours, tinted in ‘an aerial hue’, [7] blend, drift and bloom into a singular intensity of fresh colour. [8] It is a testament to the artist’s skill as a colourist that in a composition where form has been reduced to its most basic lines and silhouettes, he can rely almost exclusively on flat transparent colour, with near imperceptible gradations of tone, to shape the atmospherics and skilfully animate a mood of tranquility and ethereal lightness. Colour and light flood the entire sheet, merging so seamlessly that each seems to take on the qualities of the other. The delicacy and harmonic balance of Abbott’s technique in this work mark it as among the finest of the 1791 tour. [9]
John White Abbott
(1763-1851)
Langdale Pikes from Windermere
1791
Inscribed, signed and dated on the reverse:
“The Langdale Pikes from Windermere near Lowood, JWA. July 11. 1791”
Pencil and ink and watercolour
19 x 24 cm
Acquired by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Sold in association with Andrew Clayton-Payne
Provenance
Private Collection, UK
Jeremy Maas, 1979
Private Collection, UK
References
[1] John White Abbott was 28 years old in 1791. Little but the barest of outlines are known about his life
[2] In 1803, John Downman, who had family living in Devon, remarked to Joseph Farington over tea, that John White Abbott 'only paints by snatches, though by choice he would always be so employed.’ Joseph Farington, James Greig (ed.), The Farington Diary, Vol.II, 1923, p.258
[3] Although the number on the back of the present watercolour appears to have been removed at some point, it is likely that the correct number is either ‘58’ or ‘59’. A watercolour in the V&A numbered ‘60’ depicts The Langdale Pikes from Low-wood and was painted the day after the present watercolour on 12 July. Another work from the series in the V&A, The Queen of Patterdale, numbered ‘53’, was painted three days earlier, on 8 July
[4] Some sheets are cut down to 5 x 15 cm, whereas others from the series are made from multiple sheets joined together. A watercolour of Ullswater, for instance, now in the RISD Museum (71.153.54) is made from three sheets pasted together
[5] A watercolour in the V&A, A Subterranean Passage to the Quarry at Liverpool (17 July 1791), is numbered ‘73’, which appears to be the final number currently documented, though more works may survive. It belongs to a group of six watercolours from the 1791 tour, donated to the museum in 1924 by Mrs Fanny Douglas, John White Abbott’s granddaughter
[6] Philip Larkin, “Poem II”, The North Ship, beginning with, ‘This was your place of birth, this daytime palace’, 1945
[7] Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Skylark”, Prometheus Unbound, 1820
[8] ‘Although his later drawings relied more heavily on the pen, in 1791 Abbott handled watercolour in a painterly fashion especially close to Towne's own views of the Lake District.’ Timothy Wilcox, Francis Towne, 1997, p.156
[9] 'Abbott mastered completely, and at first seldom departed from, Towne's earlier precision and delicacy of pen outline, his flat washes, his patterning of buildings, foliage, or rocks, his crinkled line for foliage, and his split and frilled watercourses. He has the same tricks of foreground emphasis, and when he uses colours he has precisely Towne's choice of rather dry colouring.’ A. P. Oppé, “JOHN WHITE ABBOTT OF EXETER (1763-1851)”, The Volume of the Walpole Society, Vol.13, 1924, p.76
This luminous watercolour, which glows with flowing colour, dates from John White Abbott’s only known tour outside the West Country, during which he sketched in Scotland, the Lake District, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Warwickshire. [1] In the summer of 1791, over a period of six weeks, Abbott left his native Devon (where he worked as a surgeon and apothecary in Exeter) for the north of England. [2] Excluding a handful of etchings, the watercolours from this tour are the earliest known works by Abbott to survive and the only group of works by him which are numbered, inscribed and dated - no other known body of his work is treated in this manner. [3] The series of watercolours, numbering around 80 sheets and mostly of sketchbook-sized dimensions (19 x 24 cm), [4] consistently exhibit the striking clarity and economy that distinguished the work of Abbott and his teacher Francis Towne. [5]
The sky ‘shines petal-soft’ [6] in Langdale Pikes from Windermere and the vaporous colours, tinted in ‘an aerial hue’, [7] blend, drift and bloom into a singular intensity of fresh colour. [8] It is a testament to the artist’s skill as a colourist that in a composition where form has been reduced to its most basic lines and silhouettes, he can rely almost exclusively on flat transparent colour, with near imperceptible gradations of tone, to shape the atmospherics and skilfully animate a mood of tranquility and ethereal lightness. Colour and light flood the entire sheet, merging so seamlessly that each seems to take on the qualities of the other. The delicacy and harmonic balance of Abbott’s technique in this work mark it as among the finest of the 1791 tour. [9]