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Lot Essay
In the light of the setting sun, figures seated on a bank in Greenwich Park, look down towards the Queen's House and the Royal Naval College, and to St. Paul's Cathedral dominating the London skyline beyond. In 1427, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, enclosed a square mile of land from the river to Greenwich Hill and built himself a Bella Court, the forerunner of Greenwich Palace. Under King Henry VIII, Greenwich reached the height of royal favour, the park where the king would 'go a-maying' was stocked with deer for royal hunts and in 1526 he restored and rebuilt the castle for the younger members of his family and his mistresses. In 1605, King James I settled the park and palace upon his wife, Queen Anne, who commissioned Inigo Jones to design the Queen's House, completed in 1635. Following the restoration, Le Notre redesigned the park and King Charles II began work on a new palace, only one wing of which was completed. In 1692, Queen Mary ordered that the building be completed to house retired seamen. It was designed by Wren and completed by Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh, in order to house retired seamen. The Queen's House became the Royal Naval Asylum in 1806 for sons and daughters of seamen. The colonnade visible in the picture was commissioned in 1807, to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar. To the left of the Queen's House, the tower of St. Alphege is prominent. Although the designer of St. Alphege, Nicholas Hawksmoor, proposed two towers for the church, neither was used and in 1730 that proposed by John James was built.
The view of London from Greenwich was popular with Glover. He exhibited a watercolour, Greenwich Hospital, London in the distance, with the Society of Painters in Watercolour in 1815 and further sketches from this vantage point are in a sketchbook dated 1804-1831 (Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney). Another smaller oil painting is in a private collection in England and a similar view, painted in Australia in about 1838, is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. Glover's contemporary, J.M.W. Turner exhibited a view of London taken from a similar viewpoint in 1809 (Tate Gallery, London, 483). However, in contrast to the peace and tranquility of Glover's Greenwich, the sky of Turner's view is full of plumes of smoke from the sprawling metropolis below and the Thames is crowded with shipping. The verses that Turner appended to his picture express regret at the sprawling detritus of the metropolis:
'Where burthen'd Thames reflects the crowded sail,
Commercial care and busy toil prevail,
Whose murky veil, aspiring to the skies,
Obscures thy beauty, and thy form denies,
Save where thy spires pierce the doubtful air,
As gleams of hope amidst a world of care.'
As in View from Lord Northwick's villa (lot 30), the pervasive influence of Claude Lorrain is apparent in the composition and tone of View of London from Greenwich. However, the accurate depiction of the landmarks in this view, anchors the picture, setting it apart from Claude's imaginary landscapes. Glover claims the active participation of the spectator, who shares the same viewpoint as the foreground figures, an effective deioce, much used by the great Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich.
Dr. Joseph Brown, the seventh of eight children, was taken to Australia in 1933 by his Polish parents. The following year, at the age of 16, he won an art scholarship which he was forced to abandon only a few months later owing to the severe economic depression which had gripped Australia. After the war he was a regular exhibitor with the Victorian Sculptor's Society. In the 1950s, Brown began to collect paintings with an emphasis on those which represented the development of Australian art from colonial days onwards. His prestigious collection includes such highlights as Henry Gritten's 'Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens' (1865) and Eugen von Guerrard's 'Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges (1857), as well as important works by Louis Buvelot, Rupert Bunny, Conrad Martens, Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, amongst others. In 1967, Brown purchased Caroline House in South Yarra, built in 1856 for Captain Joseph Henry Kaye, R.N., Private Secretary to Sir Charles Hotham, the Governor of Victoria, in order to better house his expanding collection. In 1978, Brown was made an officer for the Order of the British Empire for distinguished services in Australian Art.
For biographical details on John Glover, see the note for lot 30.
We are grateful for the assistance of John McPhee in the preparation of this catalogue entry.
The view of London from Greenwich was popular with Glover. He exhibited a watercolour, Greenwich Hospital, London in the distance, with the Society of Painters in Watercolour in 1815 and further sketches from this vantage point are in a sketchbook dated 1804-1831 (Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney). Another smaller oil painting is in a private collection in England and a similar view, painted in Australia in about 1838, is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. Glover's contemporary, J.M.W. Turner exhibited a view of London taken from a similar viewpoint in 1809 (Tate Gallery, London, 483). However, in contrast to the peace and tranquility of Glover's Greenwich, the sky of Turner's view is full of plumes of smoke from the sprawling metropolis below and the Thames is crowded with shipping. The verses that Turner appended to his picture express regret at the sprawling detritus of the metropolis:
'Where burthen'd Thames reflects the crowded sail,
Commercial care and busy toil prevail,
Whose murky veil, aspiring to the skies,
Obscures thy beauty, and thy form denies,
Save where thy spires pierce the doubtful air,
As gleams of hope amidst a world of care.'
As in View from Lord Northwick's villa (lot 30), the pervasive influence of Claude Lorrain is apparent in the composition and tone of View of London from Greenwich. However, the accurate depiction of the landmarks in this view, anchors the picture, setting it apart from Claude's imaginary landscapes. Glover claims the active participation of the spectator, who shares the same viewpoint as the foreground figures, an effective deioce, much used by the great Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich.
Dr. Joseph Brown, the seventh of eight children, was taken to Australia in 1933 by his Polish parents. The following year, at the age of 16, he won an art scholarship which he was forced to abandon only a few months later owing to the severe economic depression which had gripped Australia. After the war he was a regular exhibitor with the Victorian Sculptor's Society. In the 1950s, Brown began to collect paintings with an emphasis on those which represented the development of Australian art from colonial days onwards. His prestigious collection includes such highlights as Henry Gritten's 'Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens' (1865) and Eugen von Guerrard's 'Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges (1857), as well as important works by Louis Buvelot, Rupert Bunny, Conrad Martens, Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, amongst others. In 1967, Brown purchased Caroline House in South Yarra, built in 1856 for Captain Joseph Henry Kaye, R.N., Private Secretary to Sir Charles Hotham, the Governor of Victoria, in order to better house his expanding collection. In 1978, Brown was made an officer for the Order of the British Empire for distinguished services in Australian Art.
For biographical details on John Glover, see the note for lot 30.
We are grateful for the assistance of John McPhee in the preparation of this catalogue entry.