The Ramparts, Mont St Michel

Alfred William Hunt (1830-1896)
The Ramparts, Mont St Michel

Watercolour over traces of pencil heightened with bodycolour, gum arabic and scratching out
28.2 by 38.9 cm., 11 by 15 1/4 in.

Provenance:
With Chris Beetles Ltd;
David Fuller, his sale, Christie's, 7th April 2000, lot 42

This shows the barbican built at the base of the monastery of Mont St. Michel to protect the entrance in the thirteenth century. A sketchbook in the Ashmolean Museum (WA.1918.7.41) includes a number of drawings of Mont St Michel dated June 1876. Two sketches of the ramparts of Mont St Michel are in the Ashmolean Museum (see Newall, op.cit., nos. 50 and 51) as well as a distant view of the monastery (no.47) and a finished watercolour of its crypt (no.48).

Literature:
Christopher Newall, The Poetry of Truth - Alfred William Hunt and the Art of Landscape, 2004, no.49, pp.148-9

Exhibited:
New Haven, Yale Center for British Art and Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, The Poetry of Truth - Alfred William Hunt and the Art of Landscape, 15th September to 5th December 2004 and 26th January to 3rd April 2005, no.49