John Glover P.S.P.W.C., P.O.W.S., P.S.B.A.

Bought directly from the artist in 1812 by a Private Collector;
thence by descent

London, British Institution, 1812, no. 152;
Manchester, Art Treasures Exhibition, 5^th May-17^th October 1857, no. 415;
London, South Kensington Museum, National Exhibition, 1862, no. 148;
London, South Kensington, The International Exhibiton, 1^st May-1^st November 1862, no. 154 (as 'Durham')

B. S. Long, 'John Glover', Walkers Quarterly, April 1924, no. 15,  pp. 18 & 38;
J. McPhee, John Glover, Lauceston: Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery in association with the Australian Gallery Directors Council, 1977, p. 10;
J. McPhee, The Art of John Glover, Melbourne: McMillan, 1980, p. 16;
D. Hansen (ed.), John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque, Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in association with Art Exhibitions Australia, 2003, pp. 135 & 230

The following condition report is provided by Rebecca Gregg, who is an external expert and not an employee of Sotheby's. The original canvas appears to be in a stable condition; lined onto a secondary support, the adhesion between these layers appears stable. There is a large patch applied slightly above the centre of the canvas, to support a repaired tear. The paint layers are in relatively good condition. There are two significant horizontal losses to the paint and a ground layers, the largest is located along the centre above the Cathedral and another approximately 29cm from the lower edge. These have been filled and over-painted; however the over-paint is not visually disturbing. The large tear is approximately 85cm in length, located 45cm from the upper edge. There are also scattered areas of over-paint remaining from a previous restoration campaign, however none of these appear to cover any significant losses and are glazy in appearance. There is a relatively discoloured varnish layer present, which fluoresces strongly under ultra violet examination. The painting has been partially cleaned in the past with more varnish in evidence across the lower and darker elements of the composition and in the foliage in the upper right. There is a layer of surface dirt present. There is a small white drip on the surface of the varnish and scattered matt patches, none of which are significant. The painting was examined in the frame.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This beautiful and romantic view of Durham Cathedral is arguably Glover's most impressive English masterpiece. Filled with an atmospheric golden light this extensive romantic landscape pays tribute to the earlier great Masters of this genre, Claude Lorrain and Richard Wilson in particular. John Glover was one of the most important figures of the British Regency art world: a member and sometime President of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, foundation member and President of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours and the Society of British Artists, and one of the first British artists to stage his own solo exhibitions (1820-1824). His posthumous reputation in Britain having been compromised by his deliberate withdrawal from Royal Academy circles and by his emigration to Australia in 1830 (where he is acclaimed as one of the most important figures in colonial landscape painting), the full extent of Glover's professional achievements in the first decades of the 19th century was only recently documented, in the 2003 exhibition John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque.¹

In fact Glover enjoyed considerable commercial success, with widespread support amongst a circle of Whig grandees, including, inter alia, the Earls of Essex and Tankerville, the Marquesses of Bute and Lansdowne and the Dukes of Hamilton and Rutland. One such patron was John George Lambton GCB, PC (1792-1840), 1st Earl of Durham, Lord Privy Seal, Ambassador to Russia and Governor General of the Province of Canada. A substantial art collector Lambton acquired the present work from Glover following its exhibition at the British Institution in 1812, possibly in celebration of his election to Parliament that year as Member for County Durham. He paid the then-record price of 500 guineas. In the light of this generous support, it is not surprising to find that the following year Glover exhibited a watercolour View of Lambton Hall, on the River Wear, near Durham - The Seat of John Lambton Esq. at the SPOWC's annual exhibition, a view subsequently engraved by John Pye for Surtees' Antiquities of Durham.²

Durham was actually one of the artist's favourite subjects. Following in the footsteps of Edward Dayes, Thomas Girtin and John Sell Cotman, Glover first visited the city during a northern sketching tour in the autumn of 1805, and loaded his sketchbook with over 40 drawings of the cathedral and castle, the River Wear and surrounding woodlands.³ These sustained him for many years: in addition to the Lambton picture he exhibited seven Durham watercolours at the Society of Painters in Watercolour exhibitions between 1806 and 1812, a smaller oil of Durham Cathedral at the British Institution in 1819, and at his one-man shows of 1823 and 1824. He even continued to paint the subject while in antipodean exile; three of the paintings in the collection he sent to London from Van Diemen's Land in 1835 were of Durham, while the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery holds an even later version, dated 1838.⁴

Of all these, the Lambton Durham Cathedral is undoubtedly the most remarkable. It is in many ways a conventional, Claudean-Italianate composition, with its dark, foliate foreground with peasant staffage, and feathery side-screens of trees framing the sunlit middle-ground motif of the cathedral. But, like the similarly grandiloquent Paysage Composé: Bergères en Repos which Glover painted in the Louvre in 1815, or A Landscape with a Sybil's Temple:Composition (1816, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney), both of which were also shown at the British Institution, the ambitious scale of the present work demonstrates both the confidence and the capacity of this master of the Picturesque.

We are grateful to David Hansen for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.

1. D. Hansen (ed.), op.cit., 2003
2. R. Surtees, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatinate of Durham (3 vols.), London & Durham, 1816-1840
3. John Glover, Sketchbook no. 55 - Durham and Northumberland, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (F5199). A sketch of this composition is annotated: 'Sold a Picture from this sketch to Lord Durham for 500 Guineas.'
4. A Catalogue of Sixty eight Pictures descriptive of the scenery and customs of the inhabitants of Van Dieman's [sic] Land, together with views in England, Italy, &c. painted by John Glover Esq. Now exhibiting, at 106, New Bond Street, London 1835