Charles Henri Joseph Leickert

Coastal landscape with cottages and figures

Neapolitan gouaches appeared in the eighteenth century when tourism in the Naples area was developing: the discoveries of Herculaneum and Pompeii made this city a mandatory stop on the Grand Tour, the journey made by wealthy Europeans to complete their education. Generally small in size for ease of transport and affordable in price, these gouaches were the ideal travel souvenir that these tourists of the early days were bringing back to capture the idyllic landscapes they had discovered during their journey and to share them with family and friends upon their return at home. The Bay of Naples and the eruptions of Vesuvius are the favourite themes of these views. Here we have a view of the Ovo Castle, which was rebuilt on the island of Partenope, in the middle of the Bay of Naples and about a hundred metres from the shore by the Normans in the 12th century on antique ruins...

(I apologize for the reflections on the glass.) A lovely, gentle watercolor of a quiet lake with the fall trees reflected in the water. In the misty distance rises a cathedral above ...

This beautifully excecuted landscape with cattle in watercolor was made by Abraham Hendrik Winter (1800-1861). Winter was born in Utrecht (the Netherlands) in 1800 and was a teacher ...

Paul Delvaux. Belgian ( b.1897 - d.1994 ). La Belle Anna, La Port De Cannes, 1930 Watercolor, Bodycolor & Pastel on Woven Paper. Signed & dated 1930 lower left. Image size 15.7 inch...

This very modern drawing presents a view of Ariccia, a small town 25 kilometres south-east of Rome. The Palazzo Chigi (in which the film-maker Luchino Visconti would film a large part of The Leopard a century later) and the adjoining church are seen from the bottom of the ravine that surrounds the town. This drawing is a moving testimony to the attraction of the city for artists of the Romantic period, who established in Ariccia a vivid artists' colony. 1. Achille Bénouville...

PROVENANCE: Christie’s South Kensington, England, June 10, 1986; Maynards Auction, Vancouver, Canada, December 6, 1994. This 19th cent wc depicts Charles Darwin in the Beagle’s Tender, Coastal Patagonia, Argentina. The son of an English mother and the Austrian Consul General in London, Conrad Martens pursued a career in painting following his father’s death in 1816. From the age of sixteen he studied under landscape watercolourist Copley Fielding, absorbing the traditions of the English watercolour school and Joshua Reynolds’ theories on painting. In 1833 Martens joined the HMS Beagle on a scientific survey expedition at Montevideo, South America, as ship’s artist, replacing the ailing Augustus Earle. He befriended the ship’s naturalist, Charles Darwin, whose empirical observation of landscape forms and climatic conditions would influence Martens’ practice. Martens left the Beagle in Valparaiso in 1834 and travelled to Australia via New Zealand and Tahiti, settling in Sydney in 1835 and setting up a studio in Pitt Street. Patronised by the colonial elite, he fulfilled many commissions for watercolours of the local landscape and Sydney Harbour, including Elizabeth Bay c1838, which features the grand neoclassical edifice of Elizabeth Bay House, built for the former colonial secretary...