Object Record
Images
Metadata
Collection |
British Watercolors |
Catalog Number |
2000.026.017 |
Title |
Jung Frau Switzerland |
Artist |
Glover, John |
Object Name |
painting |
Description |
Jung Frau, Switzerland |
Provenance |
Purchased as part of the British watercolors collection 1966 / 67, in memory of Gloria Dougherty, Dorothy Logan, and Lilian Ross. John Glover (English/Australian: 1767-1849). "Glover was born at Houghton-on-Hill in Leicestershire, England. His parents were farmer William Glover and Ann (née Bright). He showed a talent for drawing at an early age, and in 1794 was practicing as an artist and drawing-master at Lichfield. Removed to London in 1805, became a member of the Old Water Color Society, and was elected its president in 1807. In the ensuing years he exhibited a large number of pictures at the exhibitions of this society, and also at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists. He had one-man shows in London in 1823 and 1824. He was a very successful artist and, although never elected a member of the Academy, his reputation stood very high with the public. Glover achieved fame as a painter of "Italianate" romantic landscapes of Britain (including The Falls of Foyers on Loch Ness, the Lake District and London) and Southern Europe. He became known in both England and France as the English Claude. This phrase was making comparison with Glover and the French seventeenth century artist Claude Lorrain, whose works collected by eighteenth century English "grand tourists", strongly influenced the evolution of the English style, in both painting and the layout of landscape gardens. Active during the colonial period, Glover is known in Australia as the father of Australian landscape painting. Glover arrived in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Australia on his 64th birthday in 1831, two decades before the gold rush of the 1850s. He brought with him a strong reputation as a landscape painter. He acquired one of the largest grants of land in Van Diemen's Land at the time at Mills Plains, Deddington. He named his new property Patterdale after Blowick Farm, a property near Patterdale, at the foot of Ullswater in the English Lake District, which he had once owned. Glover is best known now for his paintings of the Tasmanian landscape. He gave a fresh treatment to the effects of the Australian sunlight on the native bushland by depicting it bright and clear, a definite departure from the darker "English country garden" paradigm. His treatment of the local flora was also new because it was a more accurate depiction of the Australian trees and scrubland. Trees by Glover are characterized by having sinuous limbs, somewhat reminiscent of vines. Glover noted the "remarkable peculiarity of the trees" in Australia and observed that "however numerous, they rarely prevent your tracing through them the whole distant country". John Glover's last major work was painted on his 79th birthday. The John Glover Society was established to honor and promote Glover's memory and his contribution to Australian art, and awards the Glover Prize in an annual Tasmanian art competition. The prize is for a landscape painting of Tasmania. John Glover's work features in many prominent art galleries throughout Australia (and the world). His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and a symposium in Australia." Source: wikipedia.org Information provided by Mark C. Grove Biography from Bonhams Knightsbridge John Glover is perhaps best remembered for the fact that, in 1831, he emigrated from England to Tasmania (then Van Diemen's Land) and became one of the few English artists to record the landscapes of that island in the first half of the 19th century. However, before leaving England he had a successful career both as a drawing master and as an exhibiting artist who showed regularly at the Royal Academy. He worked equally well in watercolor and oil, but his watercolors were particularly effective in rendering the subtle effects of light. The view of Goodrich Castle on the Wye, Herefordshire and Fishermen on the Brent, Twyford show his aptitude in the way he shows the light diffused through the leaves of trees, his creation of a dark foreground against which the paling distance gives a sense of the receding landscape and the reflections he paints on a mirror-smooth patch of lake water which give way to parts caught by the breeze. He evolved a characteristic technique for painting foliage by twisting the end of his brush into pointed prongs. These give a kind of crow's-foot effect to his leaves and what is known as his 'split-brush' technique is a hallmark of his work. |
Medium |
watercolor on paper |
Dimensions |
H-15 W-22.5 inches |
Catalog date |
2000-02-13 |