拍品专文
This recently re-discovered drawing is one of a group of five drawings similar in size and technique and dating from about 1785. Two of the other drawings from the group are in the British Museum and one is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the remaining drawing is in a private collection.
All five drawings were traditionally associated with Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, a celebrated beauty of her day. The tradition goes back to Gainsborough's family, but not earlier than about 1830. This example was sold in 1905 as 'The Duchess of Devonshire and Daughter walking', while another of the group was also sold from the Louis Huth collection at Christie's, though on the 19 March of the previous year, as 'The Duchess of Devonshire'. The same identification is found in the various publications of 1909, 1910 and 1928.
One of the drawings (British Museum 1897-4-10-20) was used in reverse for the full-length portrait of the Duchess, painted in the late 1780's; this has been cut down but the full composition is known from R. Graves's engraving. However, another of the drawings, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, was used for a different sitter in the portrait of Sophia Charlotte, Lady Sheffield, now at Waddesdon.
An inscription on the back of the other drawing in the British Museum (fig. 1) gives, rather confusedly, a possible alternative identification. Written by a former owner, J.W. Croker, it transcribes a memorandum by William Pearce, from whom he had inherited the drawing; in his turn, Pearce had been given it by the artist himself. According to Pearce the drawing was made for a painting commissioned from Gainsborough by George III, "representing that part of St. James's Park which is overlooked by the garden of the Palace - the assemblage being there, for five or six seasons, as high dressed and fashionable as Ranelagh: ... while sketching one morning in the Park for this picture, he [Gainsborough] was much struck by what he called 'The fascinating Leer' of the lady who is the subject of the drawing. He never knew her name, but ... observing that he was sketching she walked to & fro' two or three times, evidently to allow him to make a likeness" (the account adds that Sir Thomas Lawrence visited Pearce several times while he was working on his portrait of 'Elizabeth Farren, later Countess of Derby', now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, to study the drawing). Pearce seems to be mistaken in his reference: 'The Mall', which shows St. James's Park, does not have any known association with George III and was painted in 1783, two years or so before the large picture-hats that distinguish the drawings became fashionable. He may however have been referring to a projected companion picture mentioned by Henry Bate-Dudley in the 'Morning Herald' for 20 October 1785: "Gainsborough is to be employed, as we hear, for Buckingham House on a companion to his beautiful Watteau-like picture of the Park-Scene [The Mall], the landscape, Richmond Water-walk, or Windsor - the figures all portraits". This second painting seems never to have been completed, but Dr Hayes has identified the group of drawings as preparatory sketches for this multi-figure composition.
This would not have prevented Gainsborough from subsequently using two of the drawings for separate portraits, and they do not look as if they were studies from the life. Both the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Sheffield appear in their portraits as mature and characterful women; the heads in the drawings are schematic types of young girls. Indeed, Lindsay Stainton has suggested, see J. Hayes and L. Stainton, op. cit., 1983, on the basis of the statement by Gainsborough's friend William Jackson concerning 'The Mall', that "All the female figures in his Park-scene he drew from a doll of his own creation", that these drawings too were done from costumed dolls. One possibility is that the drawings, exceptional among Gainsborough's sketches in their scale and degree of finish, were done as independent exercises, to be used when appropriate.
Whatever the precise purpose of these drawings, they can be dated to about 1785 by both the style of costume, expecially the hats, and their use by Gainsborough for his portraits of Lady Sheffield, painted in 1785, and the Duchess of Devonshire, of the later 1780's. Their special place in Gainsborough's achievement is well summarised by J. Hayes and L. Stainton, op. cit., 1983, p.13: "The drawings are characterized by an extraordinary sense of movement, both on the part of the figures and of the landscape. The abandon of hair and costume is taken up in the almost dizzy rhythms of the conventions for depicting foliage and tree trunks, with which the figures are thus so closely integrated, and the astonishingly vigorous highlights in white chalk, while modelling the dresses with a marvellous plasticity unusual in Gainsborough, also display a spirited independent life of their own, echoing and hinting at, rather than delineating form. Nevertheless, beneath the costumes which billow out so splendidly behind them, the figures possess a remarkable weight and substance"
Estimate on request
All five drawings were traditionally associated with Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, a celebrated beauty of her day. The tradition goes back to Gainsborough's family, but not earlier than about 1830. This example was sold in 1905 as 'The Duchess of Devonshire and Daughter walking', while another of the group was also sold from the Louis Huth collection at Christie's, though on the 19 March of the previous year, as 'The Duchess of Devonshire'. The same identification is found in the various publications of 1909, 1910 and 1928.
One of the drawings (British Museum 1897-4-10-20) was used in reverse for the full-length portrait of the Duchess, painted in the late 1780's; this has been cut down but the full composition is known from R. Graves's engraving. However, another of the drawings, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, was used for a different sitter in the portrait of Sophia Charlotte, Lady Sheffield, now at Waddesdon.
An inscription on the back of the other drawing in the British Museum (fig. 1) gives, rather confusedly, a possible alternative identification. Written by a former owner, J.W. Croker, it transcribes a memorandum by William Pearce, from whom he had inherited the drawing; in his turn, Pearce had been given it by the artist himself. According to Pearce the drawing was made for a painting commissioned from Gainsborough by George III, "representing that part of St. James's Park which is overlooked by the garden of the Palace - the assemblage being there, for five or six seasons, as high dressed and fashionable as Ranelagh: ... while sketching one morning in the Park for this picture, he [Gainsborough] was much struck by what he called 'The fascinating Leer' of the lady who is the subject of the drawing. He never knew her name, but ... observing that he was sketching she walked to & fro' two or three times, evidently to allow him to make a likeness" (the account adds that Sir Thomas Lawrence visited Pearce several times while he was working on his portrait of 'Elizabeth Farren, later Countess of Derby', now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, to study the drawing). Pearce seems to be mistaken in his reference: 'The Mall', which shows St. James's Park, does not have any known association with George III and was painted in 1783, two years or so before the large picture-hats that distinguish the drawings became fashionable. He may however have been referring to a projected companion picture mentioned by Henry Bate-Dudley in the 'Morning Herald' for 20 October 1785: "Gainsborough is to be employed, as we hear, for Buckingham House on a companion to his beautiful Watteau-like picture of the Park-Scene [The Mall], the landscape, Richmond Water-walk, or Windsor - the figures all portraits". This second painting seems never to have been completed, but Dr Hayes has identified the group of drawings as preparatory sketches for this multi-figure composition.
This would not have prevented Gainsborough from subsequently using two of the drawings for separate portraits, and they do not look as if they were studies from the life. Both the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Sheffield appear in their portraits as mature and characterful women; the heads in the drawings are schematic types of young girls. Indeed, Lindsay Stainton has suggested, see J. Hayes and L. Stainton, op. cit., 1983, on the basis of the statement by Gainsborough's friend William Jackson concerning 'The Mall', that "All the female figures in his Park-scene he drew from a doll of his own creation", that these drawings too were done from costumed dolls. One possibility is that the drawings, exceptional among Gainsborough's sketches in their scale and degree of finish, were done as independent exercises, to be used when appropriate.
Whatever the precise purpose of these drawings, they can be dated to about 1785 by both the style of costume, expecially the hats, and their use by Gainsborough for his portraits of Lady Sheffield, painted in 1785, and the Duchess of Devonshire, of the later 1780's. Their special place in Gainsborough's achievement is well summarised by J. Hayes and L. Stainton, op. cit., 1983, p.13: "The drawings are characterized by an extraordinary sense of movement, both on the part of the figures and of the landscape. The abandon of hair and costume is taken up in the almost dizzy rhythms of the conventions for depicting foliage and tree trunks, with which the figures are thus so closely integrated, and the astonishingly vigorous highlights in white chalk, while modelling the dresses with a marvellous plasticity unusual in Gainsborough, also display a spirited independent life of their own, echoing and hinting at, rather than delineating form. Nevertheless, beneath the costumes which billow out so splendidly behind them, the figures possess a remarkable weight and substance"
Estimate on request