SUDBURY, MA — An early 19th-century ‘British School’ watercolor painting of a waterfall raced away from an estimate of $200-$300 to bring $18,000 ($22,860 with buyer’s premium) at Tremont Auctions on May 5. It is thought to be one of a series of sketches the English artist James Ward (1769-1859) produced of the Falls of Clyde in Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1811.
The 14 by 10.5in image, worked in shades of green and gray with white highlights, was part of an eclectic single-owner collection consigned to Tremont. Two internet bidders, who had spotted a faint pencil title to the reverse and deciphered the artist’s monogram, competed for it via LiveAuctioneers, where complete sale results are available.
The Falls of Clyde is the collective name of three linn — Bonnington Linn, Corra Linn, and Dundaff Linn — on the upper Clyde near Lanark in Scotland. The natural wonder was an attraction for tourists in the 18th century, and it was celebrated by British Romantic artists and writers as epitomizing the awe-inspiring qualities of the fashionable and patriotic ‘Sublime’ landscape. Turner first sketched there in the summer of 1801, and William Wordsworth immortalized Corra Linn, the largest of the waterfalls, in verse in 1802.
This watercolor is probably one of the many studies Ward made during a visit to the falls in 1811. The addition of the initials RA after the artist’s monogram are significant: Ward was only admitted to full membership of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1811.
The Lanarkshire studies were the prelude to the picture considered his masterpiece, the monumental oil of a bull from the Chillingham herd dwarfed by the limestone cliffs of Gordale Scar in Yorkshire, England. Commissioned by local landowner Lord Ribblesdale and painted during the last years of the Napoleonic War, it was shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1815 and is now at the Tate Gallery.
Late in his career, Ward also produced two finished oils of the Falls of Clyde based on his earlier sketches. Both The Hunted Stag Caught by the Rapids above the Falls of the Clyde, which was based on an episode the artist witnessed in 1811, and The Falls of the Clyde After a Flood were displayed at the Royal Academy in 1852, the artist’s last ever RA exhibition. The Falls of the Clyde After a Flood, measuring 4ft 2in by 3ft 3in, was sold twice at Sotheby’s in recent memory: for £55,000 (roughly $68,800) in 2000, and then for £24,000 (about $30,000) as part of the sale of pictures from the London dealership The Fine Art Society in 2019.
Commanding the sale’s highest estimate at $15,000-$18,000 was an early 19th-century oil on canvas laid on board depicting an imperial audience given by the emperor Jaiqing (1796-1820). It hammered at $20,000 ($25,400 with buyer’s premium). Measuring 4ft by 2ft 10in in its frame, it is thought to portray the pavilions in the Old Summer Palace, the main imperial residence of the Qing emperors and the center of state affairs. The compound was largely destroyed by French and British troops in the final act of the Second Opium War in October 1860.
Although relatively rare, the scene is well known. A body color on linen version is housed in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England, and it was brought back to the country circa 1800 by Richard Hill, who was employed as a supercargo by the British East India Company. It is pictured in the influential book Chinese Export Art in the Eighteenth Century by Margaret Jourdain and Soame Jenyns, where it is attributed to the studio of Lam Qua (1801-1860), the Chinese painter from Canton who specialized in Western-style portraits intended largely for export.
Estimated at $14,000-$18,000 and sold at $24,000 ($30,480 with buyer’s premium) was a textbook White Mountain scene by Benjamin Champney (1817-1907). Signed and dated 1856, this 2ft 2in by 3ft canvas in its original frame shows Mount Chocorua, the easternmost peak of the Sandwich Range. It is likely the painting exhibited in 1856 at the Boston Athenaeum titled N.H. Lake Scenery, Mt. Chocorua in the Distance. Champney had bought a house in the Conway area of New Hampshire in 1853, using it as his summer home for more than 50 years.
