Price on request

Pen and black ink over pencil 21 by 12.7 cm., 8 ¼  by 5 in.

Provenance:

Private collection since 1999

George Richmond, along with Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert, formed the core of a group of young artists who became known as ‘The Ancients’ and were close to and deeply influenced by the artist and poet William Blake towards the end of his life. ‘The Ancients’ were so called due to their belief that ancient man was superior to modern man. They sought inspiration from religion, literature, especially the poetry of Milton and Spencer, and the work of Shakespeare, as well as the natural world. Two of Richmond’s early exhibited works at the Royal Academy were religious subjects, ‘Abel the Shepherd’ and ‘Christ and the Woman of Samaria’ in 1825.

As Richmond’s reputation as a portrait painter grew, he had less time to indulge his interest in landscapes and literary works, which became increasingly rare in his oeuvre, and were produced largely as a means of relaxation.

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Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic, with an arched top

52.8 by 38 cm., 20 ¾ by 15 in.

 

Literature:

Raymond Lister, George Richmond -a Critical Biography, 1981, p.154

 

The sitter is the Hon. Anne Wood (d.1863), the daughter of Sir Francis Lindley Wood, 2nd Bt. and Anne Wood. She married John Walbanke-Childers (1789-1886), MP for Cambridgshire and Malton. According to Richmond’s accounts, this portrait, listed as of `Mrs W. Childers’, was begun in 1843 and completed after the sitter’s death in 1864. It was sold for the large sum of £52.

 

Richmond painted mainly landscapes and miniatures in the 1820s when he befriend Samuel Palmer and the Ancients as well as William Blake, but concentrated on portraits in watercolour or coloured chalks on  brown paper from the early 1830s. Huon Mallalieu describes the former as `..portraits in watercolour of a particular delicacy and  brilliance…’ and `quite the best portraits of the time in watercolour, showing rapidity and sureness of handling and a strong sense of the character of the sitter as well as his likeness (Huon Mallalieu, The Dictionary of British Watercolours Artists up to 1920, 2002, vol. II, p.129).

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