John Linnell, R.A.

All by descent in the artist’s family 

D. Linnell, Blake, Palmer, Linnell & Co. The Life of John Linnell, Lewes 1994, frontispiece (Self-portrait), p. 5 (Portrait of James Linnell)

Reigate, The Town Hall, Samuel Palmer and John Linnell, 1963, no. 33 (Self-portrait), no. 32 (Study from nature);

London, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., A Loan Exhibition of Drawings Watercolours and Paintings by John Linnell and his Circle, 1973, no. 13 (three drawings of workman in Russell Square);

Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum & Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, John Linnell, A Centennial Exhibition, 1982-1983, no. 6 (three drawings of workman in Russell Square), no. 73 (self-portrait)

This group of drawings offers an insight into different aspects of Linnell’s life and interests. The earliest drawings, those of Russell Square, date from 1806 when, as noted in the catalogue entry for lot 273, he was in the habit of working directly from nature with his friends Mulready and Hunt.

His self-portrait and the portrait of his father, James, date respectively to 1815 and 1819. Both are sensitive portrayals and while the self-portrait shows him at the age of twenty-three, his father, a carver and gilder who fell on financial hard times in the mid 1790s, was seventy when he sat to his son.

The final drawing in the lot shows Collins’s Farm, which is situated in North End on the east side of Hampstead Way. Linnell lived there with his family between 1824 and 1828 and often played host to his friends including William Blake(1757-1827) and his future son-in-law Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) see lot 275. The house was later renamed Wyldes Farm and, in 1837, was briefly lived in by Charles Dickens.