JOHN BRETT, A.R.A. | CAPE WRATH

J.M. Lawrence;

Christie's, London, 28 November 1939, lot 239;

Gooden & Fox, London;

Bonhams, London, 12 August 1976, lot 124; 

J S Maas & Co., London, where purchased by the present owner

Cristina Payne and Charles Brett, John Brett Pre-Raphaelite Landscape Painter, Yale, 2010, p.227, no.1039

The following information was provided by Charles Brett to whom we are very grateful;

In 1883 Brett bought a 210-ton schooner, the Viking, from Lord Caledon. She contained spacious accommodation for his family and a crew of twelve, and could be used as a mobile studio. At the end of June the family set off on a cruise which took them all round the British coast. By the beginning of September they had reached the Isle of Skye, and after a few days at Portree, they left at about 5 a.m. on Sept 11 to sail round Cape Wrath, where Brett made a rapid pencil sketch as they passed. The wind was in the wrong direction to take them on through the Pentland Firth, so they put in to Hoy in the Orkneys to wait for it to change. While there Brett must have painted this work from his pencil sketch. It depicts the Cape and its lighthouse in the early morning, seen across a choppy sea. The following year it was used as the basis for a larger commissioned work, Lighthouse of Cape Wrath at daybreak (Royal Academy 1885, Unlocated).