The Lizard - John Edward Brett 1876

Rosa Brett, 1855 (Oil on Board) by John Brett

"Lady with a Dove: Madame Loeser" (1864) by John Edward Brett

Net Day at St. Ives John Edward Brett

he Sicilian Sea, from the Taormina Cliffs John Brett 1893

John Brett Lady with a Dove: Madame Loeser 1864

John Brett - The South Bishop Rock, Anticipations of a Wild Night 1872

Brett spent much of September and October 1871 with his wife and baby son at Whitesand Bay, near St David's, where he painted a number of oil sketches in his newly-adopted 7" x 14" format. These all feature one or other of the distant rocky outcrops known as the North Bishop and the South Bishop which are visible looking west from the beach. In his studio the following winter he developed two larger works from these sketches - A Summer Day, Whitesand Bay (private collection) and this picture. Both were sent in to the 1872 Royal Academy, and although ...Whitesand Bay was apparently 'skied', The South Bishop... was allocated a place on the line, where, according to Tom Taylor in The Times, it 'can be fairly appreciated. It shows the sea beginning to roughen, and the clouds to gather threateningly under rising wind'. The Illustrated London News printed a very detailed description of the work: it 'gives a view over the sea towards the distant rock that is united into one mass of reddish purple behind the haze illumined by the declining sun, the rays of which, striking upwards, also redden a file of purple clouds, which, stretching overhead, herald a sudden squall. The surfaces of the waves are fretted by the freshening wind into ten thousand wavelets, and these myriad surfaces are chequered by the reddish and bluish purples reflected from the sky, the cast shadows of the waves themselves, and the emerald "local colour" revealed by reflected light'.
Neither The South Bishop... nor ...Whitesand Bay was sold until 1874, when, through the agency of a mutual friend, the Birmingham architect William Martin, both were acquired from the artist by the prominent industrialist, art collector and MP William Kenrick.
Our thanks to Charles Brett.

The Coast of Sicily from the Taormina Cliffs

Commentary by The Maas Gallery

This watercolour shows the promontory of Naxos from the Taormina Cliffs, with Etna out of the picture to the right. It dates from a trip Brett made to Italy in the winter of 1870/1 (the date on the picture is a mistake by Brett, forgetting to roll over the New Year) to observe an eclipse of the sun (the trip was organised by the Royal Astronomical Society - Brett was a keen amateur scientist and astronomer, and was accompanied by several scientists. They survived shipwreck on the way. Brett later described the eclipse in a paper for the RAS).

It was his third trip to Sicily. His first ii 863/4 resulted in his Massa, Bay of Naples (Indiananpolis Museum of Art), whilst this trip resulted in his Etna from the Heights of Taormina (Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust), to which our watercolour is closely related - but our watercolour, of sea and cloud, showing the coast that is out of view to the left of the Etna painting, is concerned more with a majestic and sparkling weather effect, an instant quickly caught, than with the detailed topography of Etna in the large finished oil. He painted another watercolour on the very same day for the second big picture to result from this trip, The Sicilian Sea, from the Taormina Cliffs (the first version 'went to the bad owing to Roberson's medium5, whilst the second, painted in 1893, was exhibited at the RA in that year and is now in a private collection).

Marianne Caroline Patmore 1871

Portrait of Laura Theresa Epps (Lady Alma-Tadema) as a Child

Ashmolean

John Brett - The Coast of Sicily from the Taormina Cliffs

Commentary by The Maas Gallery

This watercolour shows the promontory of Naxos from the Taormina Cliffs, with Etna out of the picture to the right. It dates from a trip Brett made to Italy in the winter of 1870/1 (the date on the picture is a mistake by Brett, forgetting to roll over the New Year) to observe an eclipse of the sun (the trip was organised by the Royal Astronomical Society - Brett was a keen amateur scientist and astronomer, and was accompanied by several scientists. They survived shipwreck on the way. Brett later described the eclipse in a paper for the RAS).

It was his third trip to Sicily. His first ii 863/4 resulted in his Massa, Bay of Naples (Indiananpolis Museum of Art), whilst this trip resulted in his Etna from the Heights of Taormina (Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust), to which our watercolour is closely related - but our watercolour, of sea and cloud, showing the coast that is out of view to the left of the Etna painting, is concerned more with a majestic and sparkling weather effect, an instant quickly caught, than with the detailed topography of Etna in the large finished oil. He painted another watercolour on the very same day for the second big picture to result from this trip, The Sicilian Sea, from the Taormina Cliffs (the first version 'went to the bad owing to Roberson's medium5, whilst the second, painted in 1893, was exhibited at the RA in that year and is now in a private collection).

John Brett - Marianne Caroline Patmore 1871

John Brett 1890's

John Brett - Glacier of Rosenlaui 1856

Brett spent the summer of 1856 at Rosenlaui in Switzerland. He was inspired to take the trip after reading the fourth volume of Ruskin's Modern Painters, entitled 'Of Mountain Beauty'. In Switzerland he encountered another Pre-Raphaelite follower, J.W. Inchbold, who was working on a picture of the Jungfrau. This chance encounter had a decisive effect on Brett's own art, and he wrote in his diary, '[I] saw him do a few touches to his jung-frau and there and then saw that I had never painted in my life, but only fooled and slopped and thenceforth attempted in a reasonable way to paint all I could see' (Brett Diary, 9 December 1856, quoted in Parris, p.147).

In addition to Inchbold's influence, the painting reflects Brett's reverence for Ruskin's theories on the laws of beauty and also his own lifelong interest in geology. In the centre foreground is a boulder of granite and beyond it a block of gneiss with its characteristic curving folds, so admired by Ruskin. Every rock and pebble has been painted in intricate detail, following Ruskin's dictum that a small stone could be likened to a pearl or to 'a mountain in miniature' (E.T. Cook and A.D.O. Wedderburn (eds), The Works of John Ruskin, vol.IV, 1902-12, pp.367-8). Despite its close attention to detail, the picture offers a sublime vision of nature. We are made to reflect on the enormous power of the glacier, a huge mass of steely-white snow and ice, pushing away stones and upending boulders that lie in its wake. It stretches back into a misty distance, where the tops of mountains are just visible, but where no man could survive for any length of time.

Soon after Brett returned from Switzerland, the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti sawThe Glacier of Rosenlaui in his studio and took it to show Ruskin. Ruskin was apparently delighted with the picture and conveyed 'expressions of pleasure and praise' (Brett Diary, 9 December 1856, quoted in Parris, p.147) to the artist.

Further reading:Leslie Parris (ed), The Pre-Raphaelites, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1984, reprinted 1994, pp.146-7, no.79, reproduced p.146.
Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, London 2000, p.254, reproduced p.253, in colour.
Christopher Wood, Victorian Art, London 1999, p.135, reproduced p.135, in colour.

Frances Fowle

Glacier of Rosenlaui painted - John Brett, 1856

John Brett - The Lizard.

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/brett/paintings/7.html

John Brett - The River Dart, 1866

http://www.barber.org.uk/pommay2010.html

John Brett - Parn Voose cove

oil on board
7 x 14"
on the east coast of the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. He visited frequently in the 1870's.

John Brett - Summer on the Cliffs

oil on canvas
1891
16 x 38"

Painted at Aberporth
painted while the artist was staying a Dolwen a small cottage on holiday with his family.

John Brett - Hills of Argyll

inscribed and dated 'Hills of Argyll 23 Aug 85' (upper right) and inscribed 'Received of Basil Woodd-Smith Esq the/sum of..... - the price of/my sketch No.29 of the 1885 series/"Argyll Paradise",(being the original sketch/for my picture now in the R.Academy "an Argyll/Eden" 19 x 10 inches on canvas./John Brett/28 May 1886/Garracoch nr Oban' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
10 x 19 in. (25.5 x 48.2 cm.)

On 22 July 1885 John Brett set sail from Gosport in his schooner Viking, bound for Oban on the coast of Argyll. He arrived on 2 August, and dropped anchor in Ardentrive Bay, at the north end of Kerrera Island, just across the sound from Oban town. The artist's entry for 23 August in the Viking log (Private Collection) describes the events of that day:

'Very fine day with the least possible northerly air. I took a 19 x 10 canvas in the Punt and with Michael [his eldest son] for companion and some sandwiches for lunch rowed down the sound of Kerrera and went ashore at the Ferry slip on the Island side. Hauled punt up on the slip & made her fast to a ring. Set off to walk towards the castle at the S end of the Island. The scene across the sound from the bay of the black buoy was extremely beautiful where there is a big house in a wooded dell the hills having fine bastions after the fashion of Skye all perfectly feasible to paint. Some way further on things not improving we walked back to this spot and settled to a sketch. The flies were extremely annoying. Michael bathed and got some cockles. This sketch promises well for a large picture. A stray German passed us and gave me a fill of nice Turkish Baccy.'

We are grateful to Charles Brett for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.