View of Dresden at Sunset

William Wyld (1806-1889)
View of Dresden at Sunset

Signed lower right: WWyld
Watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour and stopping out
18.2 by 29.2 cm., 7 by 11 ½ in.

Provenance:
With Thos Agnew & Sons, Manchester;
Anonymous sale, Christie's, 21st March 1989, lot 168;
Private Collection, UK

Exhibited:
University of Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, Watercolour Exhibition, 1912, no.72

This is a view of the left bank of the Elbe looking upstream with the Augustus Bridge to the left. The three visible monuments are, from left to right, the Frauenkirche (destroyed in World War II), the tower and nave of the Catholic Palace Church and the tower of the Dresden Schloss.

Another version of this view by Wyld is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see Marcia Pointon, Bonington, Francia and Wyld, 1985, no. 29, ill. A smaller version was sold as part of the collection of Gerald Bauer at Christie's on 22nd January 2003, lot 57 for a hammer price of £6,500.

A diplomat and later wine-merchant who spent most of his life in France, Wyld began his career in 1826 as Secretary to the British Consul in Calais, where he was a pupil of Francia. Strongly influenced by Bonington whose work he knew, Wyld visited Algeria in 1833 in the company of the French artist Horace Vernet