European Art: Paintings & Sculpture
European Art: Paintings & Sculpture
Lot Closed
June 18, 01:32 PM GMT
Estimate
800 - 1,200 GBP
Lot Details
Description
JAMES DUFFIELD HARDING
1798-1863
LAKE LUCERNE
titled and signed on the verso
oil on paper laid onto canvas
26 by 39cm., 10.25 by 15.5in.
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Harding, who was Ruskin’s drawing master and sketching companion, ‘had religious views in sympathy with his pupil’ (WG Collingwood, The Life of John Ruskin London, 1900, p. 81). Harding’s theories on landscape painting, which were widely published, anticipated Ruskin’s in fundamental ways: Harding believed in the truth and variety of nature, as invented and ordered by God, and that painting landscape was a man-made language for the expression of the landscape. Direct observation was therefore the vocabulary, and a knowledge of other painters the grammar of painting. In this open-air sketch on paper, simply interpreting sky, mountains and water, Harding has used none of his usual compositional props of figures or architecture - not even a boat.