Thomas Jones

Walter Brandt (1902-1978),

by family descent until,

sale, London, Sotheby’s, 8 July 2011, lot 208,

with Thomas le Claire Kunsthandel, Hamburg,

with W.M. Brady & Co., Inc., New York,

where acquired by Diane A. Nixon

Between 1776 and 1783 Thomas Jones, an artist born in a remote part of Wales but who is now considered to be one of the most original British landscape painters of the 18^th century, was in Italy. He lived, firstly in Rome, with his wife Maria and their two children, before relocating to Naples in March 1781. The family stayed there until they returned to Britain in August 1783.

The present drawing was executed 'on-the-spot' during the morning of 10 May 1781. It shows the road leading towards Santa Maria de Monte, a monastery to the east of Naples on a ridge between Capodimonte and Capodichino. Other drawings by Jones of the same road are in the collections of the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and the Tate Britain, London.¹ A third drawing entitled Walnut Trees on the Road to Santa Maria del Monti, Near Naples was sold in London in 2006.²

Jones appears to have particularly admired the sublime qualities of the landscape of this road. He recorded in his Memoirs that it was 'a hollow way ... which I discovered by accident in one of my perambulations – here may visibly be traced the scenery that Salvador Rosa formed himself upon – every hundred yards presents you with a new and perfect composition of that Master... this sequestered place was environed on all sides, with hanging rocks here and there protruding themselves from behind dark masses of a variety of wild Shrubs, and over-shadowed by branching trees'.³

The present drawing was once owned by Walter Brandt, who formed an exceptional collection of British art in the middle of the twentieth century. Works by Thomas Jones are rare in private hands, and this sheet survives in a particularly fine state of preservation.

^1.F. Hawcroft, Travels in Italy 1776-1783, Manchester 1988, nos. 119 and 120

^2.Sale, London, Christie's, 16 November 2006, lot 23 ($79,575)

^3.'Memoirs of Thomas Jones', Walpole Society, vol. XXXII, London 1948, p. 102