American and European Art

We would like to thank Stephen Wildman, Emeritus Professor of History of Art, Lancaster University, for assistance with the research and cataloging of this lot.

Lot essay:

Attributed to the artist John Ruskin, Amboise depicts the late fifteenth-century St. Hubert’s Chapel, which rises above the château of Amboise along the River Loire in France. According to Stephen Wildman, Emeritus Professor of History of Art, Lancaster University, the lesser detail, especially in the foreground, points to this watercolor possibly being an early attempt at a more detailed and finished watercolor, also titled Amboise and dating from 1841 (Private Collection).  The known watercolor was shown in the 2000 exhibition Ruskin, Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites, held at the Tate, London (Robert Hewison, Ian Warrell and Stephen Wildman, no. 40, pg. 64, illus.).

The present Amboise falls within the period of the early 1840s, when Ruskin was deeply influenced by the work of Joseph Mallord William Turner, to the extent of attempting to capture Turner’s style. In the process, Ruskin adopted and exaggerated the artist’s mannerisms, including his propensity to distort the height of architectural motifs. In Praeterita he described the now lost preparatory drawing for the finished watercolor as ‘highly laboured’ and ‘“out of my head”; representing the castle as about seven hundred feet above the river, (it is perhaps eighty or ninety,) with sunset light on it, in imitation of Turner; and the moon rising  behind it, in imitation of Turner; and some steps and balustrades (which are not there) going down to the river, in imitation of Turner; with the fretwork of St. Hubert’s Chapel done very carefully in my own way, – I thought perhaps a little better than Turner.’ (E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), The Works of John Ruskin, vol.XXXV, Praeterita, London, 1908, p. 302).

 That light the Loire with sunset last;

 Those fretted groups of shaft and spire,

 That crest Amboise’s cliff with fire,

 When, far beneath, in moonlight fail

 The winds that shook the pausing sail;

 The panes that tint with dyes divine

 The altar of St. Hubert’s shrine