Gainsborough to Ruskin

Cozens's debt to the French artist Claude Lorrain is evident in this idealized, Italianate landscape. The use of the large framing tree and darkened foreground are typical Claudian devices, as is the contrast of light and shadow.

Fielding, a student of John Varley, was much influenced by Girtin and Turner. In his landscapes he made something of a specialty of atmospheric effects, which received high praise from Ruskin. This view of the head of Glencoe, dated 1823, was exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society in 1824.

Andrew Wyld and Evelyn Joll have suggested that this drawing, formerly attributed to David Roberts, may well be by the German-born watercolorist and engraver C. F. H. Werner. Werner spent much of his life in England, becoming a student at the Royal Academy in 1848 and participating in their exhibitions. In 1860 he went to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria; in 1873 he returned to Egypt.

Cox, who had studied under John Varley in London, made regular trips to North Wales between 1844 and 1856. This view is an excellent example of the artist's control of the watercolor medium. His technique of working wet color into wet expanded the role of watercolor from tinted drawing to painting.

Roberts is recorded as having traveled to Spain in 1832 and 1833. He arrived in Spain in early December 1832 and by early May reached Seville, where an outbreak of cholera ended his tour. On his return to England, Roberts worked to convert his sketches into paintings and finished watercolors, many of which were made into lithographs for his Picturesque Sketches in Spain.

This drawing is a study for the lithograph Portico of the Temple of Edfou, Upper Egypt, that appeared in Roberts's and Brockedon's Egypt and Nubia of 1846. Roberts, who was at Edfu in 1838, made at least five drawings there. In his journal he described the scene: "Though half buried it is more beautiful than if laid open and reminds me of Piranesi's Etchings of the Forum of Rome."

Made in 1838, this drawing is a study for the lithograph General View of Karnak Looking Towards Baban-el-Molook, executed by Louis Haghe and published in volume 6, Egypt and Nubia (1849). Roberts's Holy Land was the first to present extensive pictorial views of these areas. The artist's subtle handling of watercolor and delicate white heightening effectively capture the grand yet solitary atmosphere of the ruins of the temple.

Dayes, one of the leading topographical artists working at the end of the eighteenth century, was employed to record views for various projects. This highly finished subject is one of a number of architectural views of London made by the artist in the mid-1790s, many of which were later published in Hunter's History of London, 1811.

The drawing was made during Lear's 1847 trip to Sicily, where he traveled with John Proby, who had come to Italy to study painting. Proby met Lear in Palermo at the beginning of May; the two were there again on the eve of the festival of St. Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo. St. Rosalia's body was found and brought to Palermo on 15 July 1625, and the feast is celebrated on this date each year. The double date inscribed on Lear's drawing (15. 12. July) may refer to both the day the drawing was executed and the date of the festival.