View full screen - View 1 of Lot 671. A study of the head of an officer for 'The Death of General Wolfe'.

George Romney

A study of the head of an officer for 'The Death of General Wolfe'

Estimate

15,000 - 25,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

George Romney

Dalton-in-Furness 1734–1802 Kendal

A study of the head of an officer for 'The Death of General Wolfe'


oil on canvas

unframed: 45.8 x 35.5 cm.; 18 x 14 in.

framed: 67.1 x 56.3 cm.; 26⅜ x 22⅛ in.

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 12 July 1989, lot 57, by Stewart;

With Anthony Mould Ltd., London, by 1997.

A. McNairn, Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century, Montreal and Kingston 1997, pp. 92 and 94, reproduced fig. 6.1;

A. Kidson, George Romney: A complete catalogue of his paintings, New Haven and London 2015, vol. III, p. 817, no. 1765c, reproduced (as untraced);

M.D. Paley, 'George Romney's Death of General Wolfe', in Romantik: Journal for the Study of Romanticisms, vol. 6, February 2017, p. 53 n. 12 (as untraced);

This oil sketch depicting the head of an officer is a preparatory study for a figure in George Romney's lost history painting The Death of General Wolfe, exhibited to great acclaim at the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in 1763. The painting has long been lost and its appearance can only very partially be reconstructed from three known oil sketches, including the present work, and from a handful of small pencil studies, little more than thumbnails, in the Kendal sketchbook.1 The two other sketches of this lost composition are in public collections, respectively in the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal,2 and the other in the New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, New Brunswick.3 The sketch in Kendal is smaller and depicts the heads of General Wolfe and the officer in the present work, while the one in New Brunswick solely depicts the head of the dying general.


The attribution was further endorsed by Alex Kidson following first-hand inspection in 2018.4


1 pp. 14–15; https://photoarchive.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/objects/410051/folio-7v-p-14-fulllength-portrait-sketches-for-the-deat; https://photoarchive.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/objects/409873/folio-8r-p-15-sketches-for-the-death-of-general-wolfe-a

2 Inv. no. AH 2396/82; oil on canvas; 36.8 x 46.4 cm.; https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/study-for-death-of-general-wolfe-george-romney/4AFNtiZXeqGIEg?hl=en

3 Oil on canvas, 36.5 x 31.5 cm.; Kidson 2015, vol. III, p. 817, no. 1765b, reproduced in colour.

4 A copy of his expertise dated 28 February 2018 is available upon request.