Montague Dawson Art

Alfredo Tominz (Trieste 1854 – 1936), Passeggiata a cavallo a Trieste Dipinto ad olio su tela di cm 69 x 110 firmato e datato 1890 in basso a destra. Provenienza: Asta Stadion Trie...

19th Century Dutch

The Great Fire of London in September 1666 was one of the greatest disasters in the city’s history. The City, with its wooden houses crowded together in narrow streets, was a natural fire risk, and predictions that London would burn down became a shocking reality. The fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane, an area near the Thames teeming with warehouses and shops full of flammable materials, such as timber, oil, coal, pitch and turpentine. Inevitably the fire spread rapidly from this area into the City. Our painting depicts the impact of the fire on those who were caught in it and creates a very dramatic impression of what the fire was like. Closer inspection reveals a scene of chaos and panic with people running out of the gates. It shows Cripplegate in the north of the City, with St Giles without Cripplegate to its left, in flames (on the site of the present day Barbican). The painting probably represents the fire on the night of Tuesday 4 September, when four-fifths of the City was burning at once, including St Paul's Cathedral. Old St Paul’s can be seen to the right of the canvas, the medieval church with its thick stone walls, was considered a place of safety, but the building was covered in wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of being restored by the then little known architect, Christopher Wren and caught fire. Our painting seems to depict a specific moment on the Tuesday night when the lead on St Paul’s caught fire and, as the diarist John Evelyn described: ‘the stones of Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream and the very pavements glowing with the firey redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.’ Although the loss of life was minimal, some accounts record only sixteen perished, the magnitude of the property loss was shocking – some four hundred and thirty acres, about eighty per cent of the City proper was destroyed, including over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and fifty-two Guild Halls. Thousands were homeless and financially ruined. The Great Fire, and the subsequent fire of 1676, which destroyed over six hundred houses south of the Thames, changed the appearance of London forever. The one constructive outcome of the Great Fire was that the plague, which had devastated the population of London since 1665, diminished greatly, due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the blaze. The fire was widely reported in eyewitness accounts, newspapers, letters and diaries. Samuel Pepys recorded climbing the steeple of Barking Church from which he viewed the destroyed City: ‘the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw.’ There was an official enquiry into the causes of the fire, petitions to the King and Lord Mayor to rebuild, new legislation and building Acts. Naturally, the fire became a dramatic and extremely popular subject for painters and engravers. A group of works relatively closely related to the present picture have been traditionally ascribed to Jan Griffier...

This delightful turn of the century (early 20th century) oil on canvas painting represents an Italian landscape with one of the most famous squares in the world: Piazza San Marco in ...

Jamel Akib Born in Leigh-on-sea, Essex in 1965 to English and Malaysian parents, Jamel moved to North Borneo at the age of five. At thirteen he returned to England to pursue his edu...

“Mod 7” is 20”x 16”. The heavy handed application of pigment renders an impasto portrait from another place in the deeper mind of the artist. Frank Arnold is one of the foremost abst...

Gabriel Deschamps (French — 1919 - ?) "Bateaux à quai" / Boats At Berth. Oil on Canvas. Large, well framed piece in very good condition. Frame: 45 1/2” x 26 1/2” x 2 1/2”, Canvas 19 7/8” x 39 1/2”. Gabriel Deschamps was born in 1919 and studied at the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. From 1939 he was a State Art Professor and a member of the Paris Autumn Salon...

ROSENQUIST, JAMES (1933 - 2017) F-111 (Castelli Gallery Poster) Offset Lithograph c. 1965 Signed and dated in pencil along lower edge Sheet Size: 28” x 22”, Fresh ...

Svend Hammershoi (1873 Frederiksborg, Copenhagen 1948), View over the Roof-tops of Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark, Oil on Panel, Signed: SH, in it's original frame "Designer, painter and trained ceramicist, Svend Hammershøi was the younger brother of Vilhelm Hammershøi...

Max Usadel (ca.1880-1950), Temple of Paestum, dat. 1912 View of the temple of Paestum with two ox carts in the foreground. The setting sun creates a dramati...

Robert Motherwell Untitled (from Portfolio 9), 1967 Lithograph, 1967 22.25 x 17.25 in. (56.52 x 43.82 cm.) Signed; lower left with artist's trademark initials; numbered, Publisher...

" Arroyo 14" is 72” x 60”. A rich sienna and ochre figure centered on a textured field of light yellows and beige. Frank Arnold’s paintings exhibit the highest quality materials for ...