John Linnell

Agnew's, London (purchased from the artist for £700)
Sam Mendel, Manley Hall, Whalley Range, Manchester Baron Albert Grant (born Abraham Gottheimer, 1831-1899) of Kensington and Horstead Hall in Norfolk (sale: Christie's, London, 28 April 1877, lot 123)
Agnew’s, London
Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson, Bt. (1840-1929), Dudley House, London and Hawthornden, Wynberg, Cape Town (probably purchased from the above)
His daughter, Ida Louisa Robinson, Princess Labia (1880-1961), who in 1921 married Prince Natale Labia (1877-1936), Italian Minister Plenipotentiary to the Union of South Africa, Hawthornden
Her son, Count Natale (`Luccio’) Labia (1924-2016), Hawthornden
Thence by inheritance to the present owner, at Hawthornden until 2020

David Linnell, Blake, Palmer, Linnell and Co.: The Life of John Linnell, Lewes, 1994, p. 368, no. 259b

London, Royal Academy, 1863, no. 472
London, Royal Academy, The Robinson Collection, 1958, no. 75
Cape Town, National Gallery of South Africa, The Joseph Robinson Collection, 1959, no. 103
Cape Town, South African National Gallery, on loan

A rival of John Constable, close friend of William Blake and father-in-law to Samuel Palmer, John Linnell was one of the central figures of English Romanticism. With Palmer and Blake, he shared an appreciation of the divine presence in nature, of the fertility and fecundity of the landscape and man’s impotence when faced by nature’s destructive forces. As a highly successful and wealthy artist he acquired a small estate in Redhill in Surrey in 1850 and for the next three decades, until his death, he painted powerful and poetic views celebrating the Surrey weald. The Cloud is a beautiful example from this mature period in his life, with echoes of the work of Palmer in the pastoral landscape and drover with his animals wending home as a storm approaches – a motif he painted a number of times, perhaps as a reminder that we are all at the mercy of forces greater than us, whether it be rain or a more Heavenly overseer.

There is a sketch of this composition dated 1863 in Linnell's sketchbook. The sketchbook also notes a smaller oil version and a watercolour drawing. The smaller version is probably the one measuring 12 by 18 inches sold to Agnew.

The first owner of The Cloud was Samuel Mendel a wealthy cotton merchant and shipping magnate who was instrumental in the establishment of Manchester's industrial prominence. He amassed an enviable art collection displayed at his home Manley Hall. Here were paintings by Constable, Gainsborough, Leighton, Millais and Turner. His fortune was decimated in 1875 when he lost his commercial advantage with the opening of the Suez Canal and was forced to sell the house and his treasures in an auction that took five days. The next owner of The Cloud was the flamboyant Irish-born businessman Albert Grant, who is best-known for purchasing Leicester Square in 1873 which he laid out at his own expense and gave as a gift to the people of London. He was made a Baron by Victor Emmanuelle II of Italy but it was rumoured that he had paid for the honour. After the general election of 1874 when Grant was accused of bribing voters with gifts of money, meat and alcohol, Grant was unseated and ordered to pay expenses. His finances began to unravel and by 1876, following several disastrous business decisions, Grant began to be pursued by creditors. In 1877 he was declared bankrupt after losing most of the investment of over £83,000 he had made in a railway company and was forced to sell many of his assets including his seventeen paintings by Sir Edwin Landseer. Grant attempted to recover his fortunes but was declared bankrupt a further two times and died in relative poverty. The Cloud then entered another eminent collection, that of the South African mining magnate Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson, with whose family it has remained.