- Museum number
- 1969,0614.5
- Description
-
"View of Snowdon and Lake of Llanberis"; view from the edge of the lake, two figures in a boat near the water's edge, Mount Snowdon in the distance. 1789
Watercolour
- Production date
- 1789
- Dimensions
-
Height: 290 millimetres
-
Width: 415 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- K Sloan, Noble Art 2000
The eldest son and heir of John Gisbourne of Yoxall Lodge in Needwood Forest, Thomas Gisborne was educated at Harrow from 1773-76, where John Spilsbury taught drawing. At Cambridge, Gisborne was a prize-winning classical scholar, expected to take a seat in parliament, but instead he chose the church. He was ordained priest in 1783 and given the curacy of Barton-under-Needwood, going north to live the rest of his life at Yoxall Lodge, near Derby, which he had inherited on his father's death. He became prebend of Durham Cathedral but never aspired any higher, content with being known for his sermons, and as a man of letters, writing on moral philosophy, divinity and poetry. An amateur botanist, he was related to Erasmus Darwin through his brother's wife and, a close friend of William Wilberforce since Cambridge, he was a supporter of the abolition of slavery.
Joseph Wright of Derby's well-known portrait of the young curate and his wife (YCBA), depicts them doubly sheltered, seated under a large green umbrella under an oak and a fir, his dog by his side, his wife leaning on his shoulder on the other, his portfolio under his arm and his hand with a porte-crayon pointing to Needwood forest below. It is dated 1786, two years after their marriage, when he was already a keen amateur draughtsman, but had not yet begun to publish his writings. The same year he bought paintings of Dovedale and Italy from Wright, who had long been a friend of Gisborne and was a frequent visitor to Yoxall. In 1793 the artist presented his friend with his self-portrait and they toured the Lake District together in 1794, five years after this watercolour view of Snowdon.
Gisborne undoubtedly sketched with Wright, but he had lessons and sketched with other artists as well, including John 'Warwick' Smith, whose secret of washing with watercolours he had by 1792 when he was asked to share it but was not free to do so. Their association is otherwise undocumented but Smith lived in Warwick through most of the 1780s, sketching frequently in Derbyshire, and visiting Wales every year from 1784 to 1788 and again in 1790. He was one of the first watercolourists to abandon the use of grey washes for undertones and his blues and greens are brighter as a result. This may have been the secret he imparted to Gisborne. The sky here is certainly bright and parts of the paper have been left blank; there is evidence of scraping out in the foreground figures, an unusually early example of this technique which Turner was to use to such effect.
Gisborne first met William Gilpin in the summer of 1792, on common ground not as amateurs but as fellow divines and philanthropists. Gilpin described him to Mary Hartley in September that year as 'an ingenious man; & of so much simplicity of character, that he takes with me exceedingly. You can enter his mind without lock or key. He is a man of considerable fortune; but went into orders, not with any view of preferment, but merely, as it appears to me, to have a better pretence to be serious...'. In October he wrote again: 'Mr Gisborne and I unite not only in our love of painting, (to which he is pure devotee) but in all other subjects.' They continued to correspond regularly: in 1795, Gisborne gave lessons in landscape to a young artist protegee of the Reverend William Mason, and in 1800, when Gilpin was experiencing a brief enthusiasm for body-colours, Gisborne experimented with its relative merits in comparison to watercolour.
Literature: Barbier, pp. 163, 169-70; Benedict Nicolson, 'Thomas Gisborne and Wright of Derby', Burlington, CVII, no. 743, Feb. 1965, pp. 58-62; Egerton, Wright of Derby, exh. Tate, 1990, pp. 223-4
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2000 May-Sep, BM P&D, 'A Noble Art', no.139
- Acquisition date
- 1969
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1969,0614.5