George Heming Mason, A.R.A.

In 1849 George Heming Mason’s brother fought for the unification of Italy with Garibaldi and it was this brother who introduced Mason to Giovanni Costa, with whom he had fought and gone into hiding in the Roman campagna. Costa and Mason immediately became firm friends and shared a love of painting the countryside around Rome. They greatly influenced each other’s work and would make sketching trips into the campagna which lasted for weeks, with the artists sleeping in the open air and making vivid sketches of the landscape and people around them. In 1853 they met Frederic Leighton, then resident in the capital, and formed a small group of artists known as the Etruscans which also included George Howard, 9^th Earl of Carlisle.

The present expressive sketch depicts the 3rd century tomb known in the 19th century as the Torre de' Schiavi (Tower of the Slaves), part of the complex of ruins associated with the Villa Gordiani along the via Prenestina in the countryside outside Rome. It was painted by Edward Lear, Turner and Leighton along with countless other artists drawn to the romantic decrepitude of the once glorious structure surrounded by an expanse of pastoral campagna. A note on the reverse of this picture states that it was painted in 1873 but it most likely dates from twenty years earlier (Mason died in 1872).

James Stewart Hodgson met Mason through their mutual friendship with Leighton. When Mason was suffering from severe depression and financial hardship in the later 1850s and 1860s Leighton called on Hodgson to help their suffering friend. It is likely that this sketch and others were given to Hodgson as tokens of gratitude and affection for his generosity.