A striking and panoramic oil landscape showing a dramatic mountain range in the Yorkshire Dales with brooding rain clouds unleashing sheets of rain in the distance as a farmer drives his flock of sheep home, down a country track by a river. This landscape has all the drama and joy of unbridled nature that Dawson's own work had; certainly the style of painting is undeniably similar and the slightly naive, yet honest technique so typical of Dawson's work is present in this charming oil. The artist has signed (possibly a replica or their own version of Dawson's signature and monogram, which is very similar) to the lower left corner.
The painting is presented in its impressive original frame with swept and pierced corners and rail with elaborate high relief, foliate molding. There is a canvas stamp at the reverse, which dates this painting circa 1880, just after the death of Henry Thomas Dawson. There is a faint inscription on the reverse of the canvas saying "Borrowdale."
The condition is typical for a picture of this age including some discolouration. Slight dent to the upper left corner. There is some craquelure to the surface. The frame has undergone professional restoration with areas of the molding having been rebuilt.
50 x 75cm (19.7" x 29.5")Framed Size: 76.5 x 102cm (30.1" x 40.2")
Born in Kingston upon Hull, Dawson went with his parents to Nottingham when he was still an infant. His parents were poor, and he began life in a Nottingham lace factory. But even while engaged in lace-making he continued to find time for art, and used to paint small pictures, which he sold at first for about half-a-crown each. In 1835 he gave up the lace trade and set up as an artist, his earliest patron being a hairdresser in Nottingham, who possessed a taste for art. In 1844 he removed to Liverpool, where after a time he got into greater repute, and received higher prices for his works. In 1849 he came with his family to London, and settled at Croydon, where some of his best pictures were painted. Among these may be reckoned 'The Wooden Walls of Old England,' exhibited at the British Institution in 1853, 'The Rainbow,' 'The Rainbow at Sea,' 'London Bridge,' and ' London at Sunrise.'
With the exception of six lessons from Pyne received in 1838, Henry Dawson was entirely a self-taught artist, and his art shows much originality and careful realism. He studied nature for himself, but he seems in later life to have been moved by Turner's influence to try more brilliant effects than he had before dared. Many of his works indeed are very Turneresque in treatment, though he can scarcely be called an imitator of Turner, for he had a distinct style of his own.
Henry Dawson, though painting much, and selling his pictures for high prices in his later life, remained, strange to say, very little known except to artists and connoisseurs until the large and very interesting collection of his works that was made for the Nottingham Exhibition in 1878 brought him wider fame. This exhibition showed him to be a genuine English landscape painter, of no great imaginative or intellectual power, but who delighted in nature, and represented her faithfully to the best of his ability. He died in December 1878, at Chiswick, where he had for some time resided.
| SKU | qq461 |
|---|---|
| Artist | Manner of Henry Thomas Dawson (1811-1878) |
| Date | Late 19th Century |
| Dimensions | 50 x 75cm |
| Medium | Oil |
| Subject | Landscape |
| Item Returns | This item can be returned |
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