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Lot Essay
A note in the album in an unidentified hand reads as follows 'Royal Academicians/at Play:/At the Council Table many of the/R.A.s were accustomed to make/sketches + scribbles + caricatures,/keeping their eyes and hands/in practice, while their ears/were attentive to the business/of the Academy./Their old secretary, J.P. Knight R.A./collected many of these sketches,/of which some are here preserved./J.P.Knight's Exec sold them at his/death.'
The folio includes portraits of academicians for example: Charles Robert Leslie, R.A. (1794-1859), Solomon Alexander Hart, R.A. (1806-1881), Philip Hermogenes Calderon, R.A. (1833-1898), Alfred W. Elmore, R.A. (1815-1881) and three possible portraits of one of the daughters of Sir Francis Grant all by Sir Francis Grant and possible portraits of Turner and Richard Redgrave, R.A. (1804-1888), attributed to Grant. The folio includes a number of caricatures by P.H. Calderon and a study for his oil painting The Young Lord Hamlet, painted in 1868 and now in a private collection in New York (see A Brush with Shakespeare The Bard in Painting 1780-1910, exhibition catalogue, Alabama 1985, p. 42, no. 9, illustrated in colour pl. III).
One of the highlights of the folio is a group of six sketches of Egyptian tombs and reliefs by David Roberts, R.A. (1796-1864). The drawings can be compared to a similar sketch in the Searight Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, no. SD882, included in a letter addressed to John Martin Esq. (we are grateful to Briony Llewellyn for providing this information).
The folio also includes a sketch of Greenwich Hospital, from the water, by J.M.W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). We are grateful to Ian Warrell for drawing our attention to comparables illustated in J. Gage, The Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner, London, 1980, p. 44.
John Prescott Knight, R.A. (1803-1881) was secretary of the Royal Academy from 1847-1873. He was a portrait painter and genre painter who also held the position of Professor of Perspective.
The folio includes portraits of academicians for example: Charles Robert Leslie, R.A. (1794-1859), Solomon Alexander Hart, R.A. (1806-1881), Philip Hermogenes Calderon, R.A. (1833-1898), Alfred W. Elmore, R.A. (1815-1881) and three possible portraits of one of the daughters of Sir Francis Grant all by Sir Francis Grant and possible portraits of Turner and Richard Redgrave, R.A. (1804-1888), attributed to Grant. The folio includes a number of caricatures by P.H. Calderon and a study for his oil painting The Young Lord Hamlet, painted in 1868 and now in a private collection in New York (see A Brush with Shakespeare The Bard in Painting 1780-1910, exhibition catalogue, Alabama 1985, p. 42, no. 9, illustrated in colour pl. III).
One of the highlights of the folio is a group of six sketches of Egyptian tombs and reliefs by David Roberts, R.A. (1796-1864). The drawings can be compared to a similar sketch in the Searight Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, no. SD882, included in a letter addressed to John Martin Esq. (we are grateful to Briony Llewellyn for providing this information).
The folio also includes a sketch of Greenwich Hospital, from the water, by J.M.W. Turner, R.A. (1775-1851). We are grateful to Ian Warrell for drawing our attention to comparables illustated in J. Gage, The Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner, London, 1980, p. 44.
John Prescott Knight, R.A. (1803-1881) was secretary of the Royal Academy from 1847-1873. He was a portrait painter and genre painter who also held the position of Professor of Perspective.