Including works on paper by T.S. Boys, Cotman, Cox, Dayes, G. Dupont, Francia, Samuel Jackson, Lear, Romney, Rowlandson, J.W. Smith, Sarah Stone, Towne, White Abbott, de Wint, Laura Knight, Augustus John, Helleu, Lhermitte, Harpignies.
The rediscovery of the genre of European open-air painting has been comprehensively explored in the recent exhibition True to Nature Open-air Painting in Europe 1780-1870, 2020. The show was delayed by the pandemic but went ahead at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Fondation Custodia, Paris and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge to huge acclaim. My selection reflects my own long-standing enthusiasm for these ravishing sketches, with a British angle. While they were created by artists as aide memoires for study, and not as finished works of art intended for sale, their sketchy and spontaneous quality appeals to the contemporary eye in ways which may have surprised their creators.
'Four Centuries of British and French Works on Paper' includes just over fifty British works on paper by artists including Sarah Stone, Thomas Rowlandson, Francis Towne, John White Abbott, Edward Lear and a fine group of late 19th and early 20th century drawings with examples by Augustus John, Paul-César Helleu and Henry Lamb. Of particular interest is a striking portrait of a lady (possibly Lady 'Jane' Kelly) by Laura Knight from a private collection, twice exhibited in museums at Milton Keynes and Nottingham last year.
An additional highlight is a significant rediscovery - a pastel by Léon Augustin Lhermitte (French 1844-1925) of the market in Château-Thierry, France, which escaped the Nazis in 1939. It is listed as unknown in the catalogue raisonné. It has a remarkable story, having been brought to the UK in 1939 by Lotte Heissfeld, a Jewish refugee from Vienna who escaped after the Anschluss.
The Kulka-Heissfeld collection was formed by Richard Kulka (1863- 1931) the son of a Jewish industrialist with textile factories in Jägerndorf (today in the Czech Republic) who moved to Vienna and became a lawyer. The paintings in the collection were mainly 19th and early 20th century landscapes. On his death he left 1/3 of his collection to his sister Adele Kulka and 2/3 to his other sister Valerie Heißfeld. Valerie and her daughter Lotte left Vienna in 1938 for Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss taking some of the collection with them having applied to export numerous works of art. Lotte succeeded in fleeing to England on 1 March 1939 with around 25 pictures, of which this is one. Her mother and aunt, Adela Kulka, sadly perished at the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. Lotte lived in England for the rest of her life surrounded by her collection.
Two fully illustrated digital catalogues , 'Painting in Nature' of oil sketches and 'Four Centuries of Works on Paper' and high-resolution images available.
