- 246
John Glover 1767-1849
Description
- Attributed to John Glover
- A sketchbook of landscape studies at Aldenham, Bricket, Bushey Mill, Colney, Hatfield, Mimms, Welham and elsewhere
- including views of Bushey Mill, near Weld farm, from the grounds at Aldenham Abbey (6), Aldenham church, Allens Pool, Bricket Common (9), Colney (12), Welling Green (3), the Rectory from Colney Common (2), Mimms Church and Hatfield
fourteen album sheets of Whatman paper, most with two of more drawings or watercolours, forty-five inscribed with title, forty-nine dated between 28th August and 12th September 1813
twenty-five watercolour over pencil, twenty pen and grey ink over pencil, seventeen pen and brown ink over pencil and two pencil, bound between mottled brown boards
Catalogue Note
Glover developed a great love of nature at an early age and, despite having two club feet, worked in the fields around his home in Houghton-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire. In 1786 he was appointed writing master at a school in Appleby and in 1794 he set up as a drawing teacher in Lichfield. He began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1795 and ten years later, after the success of his first exhibition at the Old Water-colour Society, he moved to London.
The present sketchbook contains over fifty studies in pencil, pen and ink and wash and occasionally watercolour of trees, grasses, cottages, churches and animals which he observed whilst sketching the area in and around Hatfield in the summer of 1813.
His technical skill and ability to re-create the natural world around him, as seen in these studies, is aptly described by William Pyne in the Somerset House Gazette of 1823: 'Who that had not seem this eminent artist ar his easel could have supposed the possibility of twisting camel hair brushes together, spreading them, to the apparent destruction of their utility, yet dipping them in jet black Indian ink, or grey, or such tints as suited his purpose, and by a rapid and seemingly adventitious scrambling over the surface of his design, prepare the light and elegant forms of the birch or willow, the graceful sweepings of the branches of trees of larger growth, and the vast masses of woods and groves sparkling in their various foliage, in all the brightness of a morning sun, or under the influence of the solemn repose of evening shade?' (see John McPhee's introduction for John Glover 1767-1849 at Rex Irwin Art Dealer in conjunction with Spink & Son and Nevill Keating Pictures Ltd, exhibition catalogue, 1986, p.9)