The Ingram Collection - Drawings from the Collection of the late Michael Ingram

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Lot 235
  • 235

David Roberts R.A. 1796-1864

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Description

  • David Roberts R.A.
  • The Bridge of Toledo
  • inscribed l.r.: TOLEDO
  • pen and brown ink and watercolour over pencil heightened with stopping out and gum arabic
  • ENGRAVED: by E.Goodall, Royal Gallery of Art, 1954, Vol.1, pl.6 (reproduced again Art Journal, 1855, p.54)

Provenance

Purchased with a group of other Spanish watercolours by Ernest Gambart, 1859, and sold by him to 'the proprietor of a Lancashire cotton [mill] through Agnews of Manchester' according to Roberts (letter to Henry Bicknell, dated 23rd November 1859);
Anonymous sale at Christie's, 28th April 1860, lot 151 (£31 10s);
Purchased from P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London, 1952

Exhibited

London, German Gallery, 168 New Bond Street, November 1859;
London, Barbican Art Gallery, David Roberts, 6th November 1986 - 4th January 1987, no.106, pl.41

Literature

Helen Guiterman and Briony Llewellyn, David Roberts, 1986, p.111, no.106, pl.41

Catalogue Note

Roberts had intended to visit Toledo when in Spain, but was held up in Seville because of a cholera outbreak and had to return from there to England. According to a note by Roberts, published in the catalogue to Ernest Gambart’s exhibition of some of Roberts’s Spanish watercolours at the German Gallery in 1859, and their subsequent sale at Christie’s on 28th April 1860, this watercolour was based on a sketch by ‘my friend Sir Edmund Head, now Governor of Canada, amongst whose many acquirements, not the least is that of being a good artist. We were in Spain together.’ It was common practice for one artist to repaint a sketch by another, and was particularly common for exotic views: Roberts, for example, made watercolours of views in Petra and India based on sketches made on the spot by other travellers.

Roberts worked on seventy-five Spanish watercolours in 1859, which he sold to Ernest Gambart, who intended to exhibit and sell them. According to some of Roberts’s correspondence, Gamart sold all the watercolours before the exhibition, but went ahead with the latter. The watercolours were subsequently sold at Christie’s in 1860.

The bridge depicted is the Alcantara, over the river Tagus, and dating from Roman times. Roberts used this watercolour as the basis for an oil, dated 1841 and bought by Queen Victoria as a birthday present for Prince Albert (Royal Collection).  The oil was engraved by E.Goodall for the Royal Gallery of Art, 1855.     

There is a bridge in Madrid that is known as the Bridge of Toledo, which Roberts also painted, but which is much later in date and has nine arches, as well as lacking the mountainous setting of the city of Toledo. A watercolour by Roberts of this Madrid bridge, dated 1832, is in the Royal Collection