William Bell Scott (1811-1890)

Details
William Bell Scott (1811-1890)

Returned from the Long Crusade

pencil, pen and black and brown ink and grey wash
10 7/8 x 8½in. (276 x 216mm.)
Provenance
3 Oct 1978, lot 43

Lot Essay

This is a hitherto unrecorded pen-and-ink version of one of Scott's favourite compositions. He exhibited a watercolour of the subject at the opening exhibition at the Dudley Gallery, Piccadilly, in 1865, no. 69. This was described by the Illustrated London News (25 February 1865, p. 190) as follows: 'More ambitions in aim is Mr W.B. Scott's representation of the return, after long absence, of a Crusader, who, half knight, half palmer, presents an appearance so grotesque as to be scarcely recognised by his astonished wife'. The reviewer went on to observe that the drawing showed 'traces of that antiquarianism and fertile inventiveness' which characterises Scott's masterpiece, the murals illustrating scenes from Northumbrian history at Wallington Hall (1856-61). The watercolour was later in the collection of the Newcastle industrialist and patron of the Pre-Raphaelites, James Leathart.

Two versions of the Dudley Gallery watercolour are known in addition to the present drawing. A watercolour of 1861 (10¾ x 8¼in.) was included in Peter Nahum's exhibition Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelites and their Century, 1989, cat. no. 29 and pl. 22c, and another watercolour, dated 1886 and rather different in format (10½ x 17in.), was sold at Sotheby's Belgravia 11 November 1975, lot 49. This re-appeared at Sotheby's on 9 February 1983, lot 175

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