The Cinder (Sketch for The Shell or The Cinder)

Details

James Ferrier Pryde (1866-1941)
The Cinder (Sketch for The Shell or The Cinder)
watercolour and gouache
7¾ x 6 5/8 in. (19.7 x 16.8 cm.)
Executed circa 1908.

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, South Kensington, 13 June 2002, lot 280, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

C. Powell, London, Rascals and Ruins: The Romantic Vision of James Pryde, 2006, pp. 23, 43-4, 55, 77.

Exhibited

Bradford, Cartwright Memorial Hall, Spring Exhibition, 1911, no. 48, as The Cinder. Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, James Pryde Exhibition, August - October 1992, no. 68, as The Cinder, as circa 1911. London, The Fleming Collection, Rascals and Ruins: The Romantic Vision of James Pryde, September 2006, no. 46, as Study for 'The Cinder'.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Painted before his first visit to Italy, Pryde has taken a familiar Edinburgh landmark, The British Linen Bank (now The Bank of Scotland) in St Andrew's Square, and transformed it to an isolated burnt out shell. Sightseers and workmen fill the foreground but in the finished oil painting, which was exhibited at the Goupil Salon, London, in 1908, they have been reduced to a single figure. The theatricality of the work was noted, and appreciated, by reviewers. It entered Lady Cowdray's collection in 1912 where it was known as The Shell. Cecilia Powell (op.cit.) in her discussion of the oil painting and the gouache study notes that the latter was offered for sale at Bradford for 200 pounds, and was at one time in the collection of Lord Henry Bentick, Lady Ottoline Morrell's brother.

We are very grateful to Patricia Reed for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

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