Price on request

Signed lower left: Blackheath/T. Lindsay 1847

Watercolour over pencil heightened with touches of bodycolour

193 x 266 mm., 7 ½ x 10 ½ in.

 

Provenance

Private Collection. UK

The present watercolour shows a view across Blackheath looking south towards Eliot Vale, with Eliot House at the far right and the tower of St Margaret’s, Lee visible. The carriage in the distance above the quarry is on Hare and Billet Road, which runs across part of the Heath. St Margaret’s Church was built between 1839 – 41 in the gothic revivalist style by John Brown of Norwich, to replace the ruined medieval church, part of whose tower still stands in the graveyard. It would not however, have been possible to have seen the tower as fully from the position Lindsay has adopted, suggesting that this work was produced in the studio, based on on-the-spot studies, or perhaps Lindsay merged a couple of different viewpoints in order to create a more pleasing image.

 

Blackheath was long exploited for its rich seams of gravel and chalk and numerous gravel and chalk pits and even underground mines were dotted over the heath. The present watercolour illustrates the scale of some of these quarries, the horse and cart at the bottom is dominated by its surroundings. Many of the old quarries were only filled in following World War II, when sites were needed to dispose of the bomb rubble.

 

We are grateful to Dr Pieter van der Merwe for his help with cataloguing this watercolour.

Price on request

Inscribed upper centre: All these light Clouds are floating underneath a higher of cold gray,/mottled over a blue tint of sky/very like this paper, but very/little of which is/seen/23d July 1858/Cusop Ch. yard and lower left: Cusop Churchyard and verso: By Thos Lindsay

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour on blue-green paper

19 by 30.4 cm., 7 ½ by 12 in.

Price on request

Signed lower left: T. Lindsay and signed and inscribed verso: Coast of Kent - nr Margate/T. Lindsay 1858

Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and scratching out

21.5 by 32.1 cm., 8 ½ by 12 ½ in.

 

Provenance:

Anonymous sale, Christie's, 4th February 1974, lot 7;

By descent until 2018