John Hamilton Mortimer

Eighteenth century Old Master drawing - Apollo destroying Niobe s children

c.1765

Collections: Sir Thomas Lawrence, who acquired the contents of Fuseli’s studio; Susan, Countess of Guilford, née Coutts (1771-1837), acquired from the Lawrence estate; Susan, Baroness North (1797-1884), daughter of the above; Mrs A. M. Jaffé, acquired in France, c. 1950 to 2016. Black chalks, on buff-coloured paper Stamped verso: ‘Baroness Norths Collection / of Drawings by H Fuseli Esq.’ Framed dimensions: 26.38 x 20.63 inches This boldly drawn sheet depicting a seated figure was made by Fuseli at an important and highly productive moment in his career. The monumental drawing is closely related to another sheet by Fuseli in the British Museum which Schiff published as subject unknown. Both drawings were made when Fuseli was designing his most important sequence of historical works, including scenes from Shakespeare and Milton, The Nightmare and The Death of Dido which was exhibited at the Royal Academy to great critical acclaim in 1781. The present drawing does not relate directly to any of Fuseli’s finished historical paintings of the period, but evidently the image of a slightly menacing, seated and covered old woman was precisely the sort of motif he was playing with. It is notable that the same figure reappears later in Fuseli’s work as the witch from Ben Jonson’s Witch’s Song which Fuseli produced as both a painting and engraving in 1812. Fuseli returned to London in 1779 from a highly creative and productive period in Rome and established himself as one of the leading history painters of the period. Fuseli re-established contact with his old mentor Sir Joshua Reynolds, becoming a regular guest at his dinner table and visitor to his studio. The earliest and most striking manifestation of this strategy was Fuseli's Death of Dido, exhibited in 1781 at the Royal Academy. Executed on the same scale as Reynolds's version (Royal Collection), Fuseli's vertically oriented picture was hung directly opposite Reynolds's with its horizontal orientation, inevitably inviting comparison between the two works and garnering Fuseli much publicity and favourable reviews in the newspapers. The present, previously unpublished sheet, relates closely to a drawing now in the British Museum. That sheet shows the same seated old woman, drawn on a smaller scale and more schematic in design, seated next to an anatomical drawing of a man. The pose of this figure is related to the pose of Dido in his Death of Dido; the foreshortened torso, arrangement of head, oblique view of Dido’s features and arms all suggest that the study can be viewed as an initial thought for the composition. Fuseli may have initially thought of including the figure of the hunched and covered old woman. Drawn on identical paper to the British Museum sheet, our study is an enlarged depiction of the same figure, more elaborately delineated and developed. The presence of a chain to the right of the figure, suggests that the iconography was related in some way to a scene of imprisonment. Fuseli had first explored the motif of the hooded old woman in an early Roman drawing, 'The Venus Seller'. The idea of a grotesque old woman, hooded and with angular nose and projecting chin seen in profile was most spectacularly used by Fuseli in his sequence of paintings depicting The Three Witches from Macbeth. Fuseli seems to have kept the present sheet and may have returned to it when preparing a painting of The Witch and the Mandrake from Ben Jonson’s Witch’s Song from his Masque of Queens in 1812. Here the same seated figure looks out from under her hood and picks a mandrake by moonlight. Jonson’s drama had been performed at the court of James I in 1609, inspired the subject. To throw the nobility of the queens into relief, the poet added a coven of witches, one of whom declares: ‘I last night lay all alone, On the ground, to hear the mandrake groan; And plucked him up, though he grew full low, And, as I had done, the cock did crow.’ The figure was reversed in the associated etching which was published in 1812. It seems likely that the present drawing remained as part of Fuseli’s working archive of figure studies. The present drawing was presumably purchased with the bulk of Fuseli’s drawings after the artist’s death by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Lawrence’s large group of Fuseli drawings were then acquired by Susan, Countess of Guildford (1771-1837). Lady Guildford was the eldest daughter of the banker Thomas Coutts (1735-1822), who himself had supported Fuseli’s journey to Rome in the 1770s and had remained one of the artist’s key...

Collections: J. Goodfriend, USA. Brown wash and pencil on laid paper Framed dimensions: 13.25 x 11.75 inches This powerful drawing was made at the time that Romney was painting the famous group portrait of the Gower Children now in Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal. Romney was a bold and incisive draughtsman who made numerous rich brown ink studies, principally for historical compositions; by contrast, comparatively few studies linked directly to his portraits survive. The existence of a group of studies for the Gower Children underscores its importance to Romney. The sitters were the five youngest of the eight children of Granville, 2nd Earl Gower who, at the time the portrait was commissioned, was President of the Council in Lord North’s government and one of the best-connected and most influential people in England. The present drawing which is a large scale treatment of the composition in its final form perfectly distils Romney’s conceit: the younger children dancing whilst their elder sister, in the guise of a Bacchante plays the tambourine. The bold and dramatic study underlines both the artistic confidence and classical grandeur Romney gained during his trip to Italy between 1773 and 1775. The commission from Granville, 2nd Earl Gower to paint five of his children came shortly after Romney’s Continental tour. The initial idea, as represented by the present drawing, seems to have been to paint Lady Anne, the figure on the right of the composition playing the tambourine, who was the youngest of Gower’s first four children by his second wife Lady Louisa Egerton and who married the Rev. Edward Vernon Harcourt, later Archbishop of York, with three of her younger half-siblings by Gower’s third wife, Lady Susanna Stewart: at the left Lady Georgina, who became Countess of St Germans following her marriage to the Hon. William Eliot; at the right Lady Charlotte Sophia, later Duchess of Beaufort and in the centre Lady Susanna, later Countess of Harrowby. Romney added a fifth child to the finished portrait, Gower’s son: Lord Granville, later created Viscount Granville and Earl Granville. In Italy Romney had produced a large number of studies of classical antiquities and old master paintings. The commission from Gower offered Romney the opportunity to explore a complex multi-figural group, putting into practice the kind of ambitious classical quotations that Reynolds was currently exploiting. In 1773 Reynolds had completed the remarkable group portrait of the Montgomery Sisters, now in the Tate Gallery, London, which showed them adorning a herm of the Roman god Hymen; the composition used a garland to link the three figures who were shown in classical costume dancing at the foot of a Roman sculpture. Scholars have long pointed to a similar sources for the two compositions: the works of Nicolas Poussin. Whilst the Montgomery Sisters is based, in part, on a Bacchanal now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, the Gower Children has always been associated with Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time, now in the Wallace Collection, London. It seems more likely that Romney was looking to an antique source in the form of the Borghese Dancers, a Roman relief, then in Palazzo Borghese in Rome. Romney would have seen the relief of interlocking, dancing maidens and would also have known Guido Reni’s Aurora...

Inscribed by the artist in pen and brown ink, upper margin: 'σοφὴν δὲ μισῶ: μὴ γὰρ ἔν γ' ἐμοῖς δόμοις / εἴη φρονοῦσα πλείον' ἢ γυναῖκα χρή [Euripides, Hippolytus, 11, 640-41: “But a ...

Terracotta 19 x 25 ½ inches; 480 x 650 mm Signed and dated: ‘W Tyler Excu. 1765’ Collections: Cyril Humphris, London; Humphris sale, Sotheby's, New York, 10-11 January 1995, lot 74...

Red chalk on paper Image size: 9 x 7 inches (23 x 17.75 cm) Acid free mount The Greek god Attis was the spouse of Cybele, the fertility goddess.  He was from Phrygia, a kingdom in c...

Louis-Félix de La Rue (1730-1777)  A Mythological scene Pen and black ink on paper Bears an old inscription with the name of the artist on the lower left bo...

Allegorical Scene is an original modern artwork attributed to the Louis Fabricius Dubourg in the first half of the XVIII Century. Original sepia drawing...

'Cain et Abel' Circle of Franois Devosge (1732-1811) French pencil drawing with watercolour wash on paper size: 12.25 x 9 inches private collection, France The painting is in overall...