Lot 18
  • 18

John Linnell 1792-1882

Estimate
60,000 - 80,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • John Linnell
  • The Farmer's Boy
  • signed l.c.:J.Linnell fect. 1830.
  • oil on panel

Provenance

E.T. Daniell;
Richard Redgrave and thence by descent

Exhibited

Royal Academy, 1830, no.251;
British Institution, 1831, no.75;
Royal Academy, Exhibition of the Works of the Old Masters, 1883, no.76

Literature

Alfred T. Story, The Life of John Linnell, 1892, p.226;
David Linnell, Blake, Palmer, Linnell & Co.  The Life of John Linell, 1994, pp.127, 134

Catalogue Note

In early 1829, Linnell spent considerable time with Samuel Palmer to whom he gave advice and encouragement.  Together they visited the Royal Academy where Linnell worked on a copy after Carracci for the purposes of an engraving by Pye.  They also studied a work by Leonardo at Somerset House, and, with other members of 'the Ancients' - young artists consumed by interest in the recently deceased William Blake - Palmer was a regular visitor to Linnell's studio at 26 Porchester Terrace.  In June 1829, Linnell, after viewing the Summer exhibition at the Royal Academy, accepted an invitation to visit Palmer at Shoreham.  He travelled with George Richmond on the coach to Riverhead and from there they hired a cart for three shillings to complete the journey.

It was during this visit that Linnell and Palmer sketched the young shepherd boy piping.  Palmer's sketches are untraced but he used the pose in his mid 1850's watercolour 'The Piping Shepherd' (Ulster Museum, Belfast [835] ).  Linnell's two watercolour studies, and one oil replica are recorded.  One watercolour of the boy, signed J.Linnell Shoreham (fig.1) is in a private collection.  Another, signed the same way, was with Anthony Reed in 1978, and the oil replica is in the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art.  This painting, the culmination of his studies of the young boy, whose existence was recorded, and whose appearance was known from the surviving studies and replica, has come to light in the collection of a descendant of Richard Redgrave, Linnell's fellow artist.

Linnell records in his journal of June 1829 that he worked on the picture for four days, and then did not touch it until February 1830 when he spent a further five days on it.  In March he worked on it for a further six days and then sent it to the Royal Academy.  In December 1830, he retouched it again before sending it to the British Institution in 1831.  The visit to Shoreham in June 1829, coincided with Linnell being unwell and weak, and on the second day of his stay, Palmer borrowed a wheel barrow and with Richmond pushed Linnell at midnight, all of them singing songs from Locke's Macbeth.  Indeed, Palmer referred back to this event, which must have bewildered any of the villagers of Shoreham who witnessed it, in his letter of 30th July with which he entreated Linnell to return again to Shoreham, ....' I hope you will as soon as possible find your way to Morants Court Hill whence, if I have strength I will fetch you in the barrow or hire a curate to assist me from the village.' (The Letters of Samuel Palmer, edited by Raymond Lister, 1974, p.54-5.)

Storey's The Life of John Linnell, (see Lit. op.cit.) records that the painting was 'given to Mr Daniel'.  This must refer to Rev. Edward Thomas Daniell (1804-1842), a pupil of Linnell who became a close friend also.  The painting, by 1883, and probably much earlier came into the collection of Richard Redgrave (1804-1888) who met Linnell on many occasions, often coinciding with the Summer exhibition at the Royal Academy.  Katherine Crouan (see John Linnell A Centennial Exhibition, exhibition catalogue for Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1982/3, p.25) has suggested that, whilst Linnell clearly concentrated on the rural dress of the piping boy and captured his mischievous glance to the painter, he might also have had in mind Blake's Songs of Innocence.  Certainly, the rediscovery of this, one of Linnell's most important works, reinforces Linnell's links both to Blake and to his future son-in-law, Samuel Palmer, and his time spent in Shoreham.