Walton House Antiques has dated this piece to the 19th Century.
His work is found in most prominent collections, and he was a regular exhibitor at the Academy, where this painting was shown three times: 1863, no. 671, then in the Modern Masters Exhibition 1883, no. 83, and finally in the Winter Exhibition of 1901, no. 9. Provenance: H.J.Turner, Stockleigh House, Regent's Park
Oil on Panel, signed and dated 1863
Fine Original Frame
Exhibited: Royal Academy 1863 no.671
Royal Academy Exhibition of Old and Modern Masters 1883 no. 83
Royal Academy Winter Exhibition 1901 no.9
Provenance: H.J.Turner Esq.
Stockleigh House, Regents Park, Inverness House, Porchester Square
John Linnell, not just a great painter but a true artist. A man for whom life and art were inextricably linked, one serving the other. John Linnell was born into an ordinary working family, his father was a frame maker and his uncle a furniture maker. He rose to become one of the outstanding landscape painters of the 19th century, ranking alongside William Blake and Samuel Palmer.
As a youngster he was noticed and assisted by the great Sir Benjamin West, and trained with John Varley. William Mulready then became his mentor and ‘champion’. As with many artists, the initial years were hard, and Linnell had to take up portraiture to support his large family. However, the whole purport of his being was directed to the ‘realism’ of landscape. He believed firmly that landscape was more than the sum of its parts, and recorded it faithfully in order to show that in landscape there was a reflection of something spiritual, a Divine Hand. He held passionate and unorthodox religious views, rejecting formalised church religion and espousing a brand of low Protestantism, developing his landscape painting as a carriage for religious expression. To a large extent the sheep, harvesters and storms of his landscapes are pastoral metaphors. Occasionally he devised an actual Biblical scene such as ‘Noah, the Eve of the Deluge’, but he preferred to see the hand of God manifest itself in nature.
Like Blake, he drew on the work of the Northern Renaissance artists – Durer, van Eyck, Lucas van Leyden and his collaboration with his son in law, Samuel Palmer, was beneficial to both painters. Linnell’s early work is highly descriptive and throughout his life he made use of the camera obscura, and then the camera as it developed. His later ‘mature’ landscapes, from 1850 onwards, look for a distillation of landscape into ‘an aspect of nature’. His technique evolved alongside into light flickering brushstrokes, slightly impressionistic, building forms in layers of fine glazes over a white ground. This use of white ground was borrowed from Blake and was to become one of the major precepts of the Pre-Raphaelites, who much admired John Linnell.
“Feeding Sheep” belongs to this period of mature work, the shepherd tending his sheep is a strong symbol for Linnell. Note the Luminescent quality of the colour due to the fine overlay of glazes.
Linnell was a man of great stature and uncompromising views although a regular enough exhibitor at the Academy, his application for Associateship as a young man had been spurned by the Academy board. It became a matter of embarrassment to the Academy that they had not sooner recognised such a master. However, after his death, Linnell’s work was honoured in an exhibition of Old and Modern Masters held in 1883, which highlighted his work. His paintings were frequently recalled for the Winter Exhibitions thereafter (this one being shown for the third time in 1901).
John Linnell spans a great age, his work begins with Sir Benjamin West and Sir Thomas Lawrence.
Walton House Antiques has dated this piece to the 19th Century.
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Oil Painting by John Linnell Royal Academy "Feeding Sheep"
