Offered by Period Portraits
An extensive landscape near Manchester, by the celebrated Scottish landscape painter Patrick Naysmith (1787-1831). Signed with initials at bottom centre.
Born in Edinburgh in 1787 Patrick Naysmioth was the son of the eminent Scottish landscapist Alexander Nasmyth, teacher and friend of Robert Burns, while his brother James both invented the steam hammer – a key tool in Victorian heavy industry – and was the first astronomer to observe solar flares. For good measure, six of Patrick’s sisters became artists of note.
Happily Patrick Naysmith had an artistic talent which flourished and also triumphed over his physical disabilities. On a sketching trip with his father Patrick badly injured his hand in an accident, and this forced him to learn to draw again…left-handed. Ingenious of character Patrick even designed a small travelling tent to take into the countryside. It allowed him to work in all conditions, however sadly around the age of, 17 he became deaf, reputedly as a result of sleeping within it, upon a damp mattress.
Moving to London in 1807 Naysmith discovered the work of the 17th-century Dutch landscapists, specifically Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael, and adopted their style of depicting nondescript corners of the landscape with intense fidelity and observation. In fact he followed the Dutch manner so closely that, despite being Scottish, he became known as the “English Hobbema”.
Indeed this scene of rural life in northern England, created in the early nineteenth century attests to Nasmyth’s admiration for Dutch landscape painting seventeenth-century. The minutely detailed depiction of the terrain creates the impression of a naturalistic view of the countryside, and the composition is carefully composed, with an eye toward pleasing contrasts. Nasmyth was particularly adept at painting the sky and the soft light seen here bathes the northern English landscape in an Italianate glow.
In his biographical sketch on Naysmith in Farewell to Life: Lyrical Reminiscences of British Peers in Art, Richard Langley commented on the “moist freshness” that Nasmyth was able to evoke and that no one equalled him “in pencilling the old rutted trunks of oak or elm”.
Higher resolution images on request. Worldwide shipping available.
Provenance: With Agnews and Sons, 43 Old Bond Street, London (label verso)
Dimensions: 64cm x 76.5cm
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