LIONEL PERCY SMYTHE, R.A., R.W.S., R.I. (BRITISH 1839-1918)
THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD: 'TWIXT CALAIS AND GUINES'
£1,500
Auction: Day Two: 19 May 2022 | From 11:00
Description
Signed and inscribed 'Smythe L.P./ "The Field of Cloth of Gold"/...' verso, pencil and watercolour
Dimensions
62.5cm x 125.5cm (24.5in x 49.5in)
Provenance
Provenance: Sir George Findlay.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's Belgravia, 18 May 1976, lot 36, where purchased
for the present collection.
The Peter Rose and Albert Gallichan Collection
Exhibited:
London, New Watercolour Society, Summer Exhibition, 1883, no. 92.
Chicago, World's Columbian Exhibition, 1893, no. 363.
New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art,
and Birmingham, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Victorian Landscape
Watercolours, 1992-93, no. 102.
LITERATURE
R.M. Whitlaw and W.L. Wyllie, Lionel Percy Smythe, R.A., R.W.S., his life and
work, London, 1923, p. 106.
R.M. Whitlaw, 'Lionel Percy Smythe, R.A., R.W.S.', The Old Water-Colour
Society's Club, London, 1924, I, pp. 64 and 72.
Footnote
Note: Smythe, born in London, lived in Normandy from 1879, although he had been visiting the area since he was a boy. He went to Guines on his honeymoon in 1869, where he first conceived of this picture, with its historical title alluding to the meeting between Henry VIII of England and Francois I of
France which took place in Guines in 1520. Smyth also produced an oil of the subject, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884, and an etching. The present
watercolour was exhibited at the New Watercolour Society in 1883, a year after Smythe's election to the membership, where Whitlaw and Wyllie (op.cit.)
describe it as 'one of the note-worthy drawings of the exhibition'.