Lot Essay
Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863, The Rescue after the Storm is one of the most powerful among the spectacular Highland dramas that Richard Ansdell painted from the 1850's. He committed to such subjects presumably to emulate his great competitor, Sir Edwin Landseer, whose monumental Coming Events (Collection of his Grace The Duke of Northumberland) and Man Proposes, God Disposes (Royal Holloway, University of London) are very close to Ansdell's canvas. Both Ansdell and Landseer were deeply inspired by the rugged grandeur of the Highlands. Through their highly dramatic use of chiaroscuro and their emphasis on pathos, they expressed "the violence and danger that were central to the romantic view of nature..." and imagined "wild, animal versions of the dramas normally played out by human figures in paintings of history, myth and legend" (Malcolm Warner, The Victorians, Washington, 1997, p.61)