After John White Abbott’s teacher, Francis Towne, went to the Lake District with his uncle James White in 1786, Abbott followed suit five years later on his own tour of Scotland and then the Lake District during the second week of July 1791, remaining in the region for six weeks and producing about eighty dated drawings. He moved from Carlisle on July 7 to Ullswater for two days, followed by Rydal on July 10. He went to Grasmere and Windermere on July 11–12 and then sketched Borrowdale on July 13 before traveling south. Abbott returned to Windermere on July 16, as indicated by the inscription on the verso of this sheet, and finally reached Liverpool by the July 17.1 He adopted Towne’s signature crisp outlines in pen and ink containing broad color washes, after drawing the landscape in situ.2 The artist also followed his teacher in his manner of portraying silhouetted trees lining the lake’s edge, at a lower vantage point.3 Abbott was acquainted with Thomas West’s Guide to the Lakes, popularly published from 1778 to 1799, giving specific places and ideal vantage points of the lake. He probably also knew of the poet Thomas Gray’s Tour of the English Lakes (1769), since Francis Towne owned a copy. Constructed as a series of letters to Gray’s sick friend Dr. Wharton, Gray described the lake view as he “saw the solemn colouring of night draw on, the last gleam of sunshine fading away on the hill tops, the deep serene of the waters and the long shadows of the mountains thrown across them.”4
In this watercolor, Abbott captures the lake in that soft evening light. In the lower right, slabs of slate are stacked along the lake’s edge. From the end of the eighteenth century, the slate quarries of the area had begun to increase production to supply the expanding industrial areas of northern England. The slate blocks would have been transported by boat, like the one seen moored in front of a building, most likely the popular Low Wood Inn, situated about a mile from the head of Windermere.5
For this composition, Abbott took a low vantage point, making the narrow lake appear broad. He was clearly emulating the stance of his teacher, though Abbott positioned himself looking toward and closer to the inn, whereas Towne looked further west (fig. 24.1).6 —Dena M. Woodall
Notes
1. See Karen Taylor Fine Art, British Watercolours, Drawings and Oil Sketches (London: Karen Taylor Fine Art, 2019), 30, cat. 11.
2. See Greg Smith, “Turning His Back to the Scene,” in Michael Broughton, et al., The Spooner Collection of British Watercolors at the Courtauld Institute Gallery, exh. cat. (London: Courtauld Institute Gallery; San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 2005), 23–27.
3. The provenance possibly includes Mark Grant-Sturgis and Walker’s Gallery, London, as it has a similar inscription as cat. 23. This drawing was also in the Flannery collection, which was assembled by James and Audrey Flannery, who lived in St. John’s Wood, London. Irish by birth, James Flannery was a consultant surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in London and also had a Harley Street practice. They started collecting in the 1970s and continued until he died in 2005. They mainly took advice on purchases from Andrew Wyld.
4. See Thomas West, Guide to the Lakes (London: Richardson and Urquhart; Kendal, UK: W. Pennington, 1778). It was republished several times, and therefore available closer to the time the drawing was made.
5. This site is mentioned nine years later in the journal of Dorothy Wordsworth, the sister of the famed poet William Wordsworth, stating, “May 14 1800. Wm & John set off into Yorkshire after dinner at ½ past 2 o’clock-cold pork in their pockets. I left them at the turning of the Low-wood bay under the trees.” See Dorothy Wordsworth, introduction by Jonathan Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journals: The Revised Complete Text (London: Michael Joseph, 1987), 18.
6. See Francis Towne, Lake Windermere, 1786, watercolor and brown and gray ink over graphite on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection [B1975.4.1878]. Francis Towne made other watercolors of the lake, see Francis Towne, A View from Low Wood, August 16, 1786, graphite, pen, and brown ink and watercolor on laid paper in artist’s mount, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, December 1975 [B1975.4.1759], and Francis Towne, At Low Wood Looking Across Lake Windermere, 1786, graphite, pen, and gray ink and watercolor [FT524], Christie’s London, British Art on Paper, June 5, 2003, lot 81, current location unknown.
On Windermere Near Low Wood—Evening Light
Oppé, A. P. “John White Abbott.” Walpole Society 13 (1925): 67–84.
Royal Albert Memorial Museum. Paintings and Drawings by Francis Towne and John White Abbott. Exeter, UK: Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 1971.
Sloan, Kim. “A Noble Art”: Amateur Artists and Drawing Masters c. 1600–1800. London: British Museum Press, 2000.
Wilcox, Timothy. Francis Towne and His Friends. London: Colnaghi, 2005.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. The Grasmere Journals. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1987.
Powell, Cecilia, and Stephen Hebron. Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts: Discovering the Lake District, 1770–1820. Grasmere, UK: Wordsworth Trust Museum, 2010.
ProvenanceThe artist, 1791; possibly Mark Grant-Sturgis, K.C.B. (1884–1949), until 1938; [possibly Walker’s Gallery, London,1938]; [Thomas Agnew & Sons, London, inv. no. 14336], possibly early 1980s; James Francis Flannery (1929–2005) and Audrey Flannery, St. John’s Wood, London, possibly the late 1970s and 2005; by descent, until 2018; [Karen Taylor Fine Art, 2018–2019]; purchased by MFAH, 2019.
Comparative Images
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