JOHN GLOVER P.S.P.W.C., P.O.W.S., P.S.B.A. | View of Ullswater from Gowbarrow Fell - Evening

Private Collection, Ireland;
From whom purchased by the present owners in the 1990s.   

The canvas is lined, the paint surface is clean and the varnish is clear and even. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals very few scattered spot retouchings, the highest concentration of which are along parts of the left margin, in the centre of the lower margin, in the clouds upper centre, and to a fine horizontal line 4 cm. long upper right. In overall very good condition. Offered in a carved and plaster gilt wood frame with some losses.
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Only recently rediscovered, this painting was long believed to be an Irish landscape. However, the topography makes it clearly identifiable as Cumbria: a view of the southern end of Ullswater seen from Gowbarrow Fell, with Glenridding Dodd in the middle distance and the peaks of the Helvellyn Range in the right background. The Lake District was one of John Glover’s favourite painting grounds; he made the first of at least nine tours there in 1793 and from his first metropolitan success at the Society of Painters in Water Colours (‘the Old Watercolour Society’) to his very last public exhibition in 1835, picturesque views of the Lakes remained a constant feature of his output.

Even after the artist expanded his practice from watercolour to oil in the 1810s, the landscape of Cumberland and Westmoreland remained a favourite subject. In semi-retirement from around 1818 he even leased a farm near the village of Patterdale at the head of Ullswater, and after his migration to Australia in 1831 named his Van Diemen’s Land pastoral property 'Patterdale Farm'.

The present painting is highly characteristic of the artist's mature work, not only by virtue of its subject matter but also in its somewhat conventional (indeed, by the 1820s, even retardetaire) Claudian composition as well as in its delicate gloaming light, with associated roseate clouds and sun-gilt waters. In the 'landscape chiaroscuro' darkness of the foreground, the close attention to bracken and other ground cover and the split-brush treatment of arboreal foliage are typical, as is the staffage of peasants, goats and the artist's omnipresent cows.

To date it has not been possible to connect this work securely to documented pictures, but Glover exhibited two versions of Ullswater, from Gobray Park in his self-managed Bond Street solo exhibitions of 1822–24, one of these (or another) with the newly-established Society of British Artists in 1824, and again (or another) in his pre-emigration sale of 1831.

We are grateful to Ass. Prof. David Hansen, Centre for Art History and Art Theory, Australian National University, for providing this catalogue entry. Professor Hansen is the author of John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque, Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2003.