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Lot Essay
Logsdail was born and brought up in the Close of Lincoln Cathedral, where his father was Verger for fifty years. He studied at the local School of Art under E.R. Taylor (later to make his name at Birmingham) and at Verlat's Academy in Antwerp, where Frank Bramley, also a native of Lincolnshire, was a fellow student. In the autumn of 1880 he travelled to Venice, working for a time with Sargent, who was then lodged in the Palazzo Rezzonico together with Boldini. In 1883 he toured the Balkans, Egypt and Palestine, but Venice remained his base even after his marriage in 1892. He and his wife only finally returned to England in 1900. Two children were born in Venice, and the family had an appartment in the Palazzo Contarini near the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto.
The present picture is an important product of Logsdail's Venetian period. There are links with the work of Frank Bramley, who had himself been in Venice in 1882 or 1883 but by the winter of 1884-5 had settled in Newlyn, where he was to become a pillar of the artistic community until he left the area in 1895. Bramley was generally regarded as Newlyn's leading practictioner of the so-called square brush technique, and Logsdail too employed this to a modified extent. The picture is also comparable to the Venetian work of Luke Fildes and his brother-in-law Henry Woods. Fildes arrived in Venice, where Woods was already settled, in January 1881. He stayed two months and was to pay regular visits over the next ten years. Logsdail must have encountered him, especially as there are accounts of Fildes' meetings with Sargent. One of the most important of Fildes' Venetian pictures, Venetian Life, dated 1884, was sold in these Rooms on 24 November 1989 for £101,200.
A Venetian al Fresco belonged to Joseph Ruston of Lincoln, who formed a large collection of modern British and continental pictures, Old Masters and drawings. His British pictures include major examples of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Linnell, Hicks and many others, and no fewer than seventeen works by Logsdail. The present picture was one of two which he lent to the Royal Jubilee Exhibition at Manchester in 1887, the other being The Piazza, Venice, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1883 and now in the Birmingham City Art Gallery.
The present picture is an important product of Logsdail's Venetian period. There are links with the work of Frank Bramley, who had himself been in Venice in 1882 or 1883 but by the winter of 1884-5 had settled in Newlyn, where he was to become a pillar of the artistic community until he left the area in 1895. Bramley was generally regarded as Newlyn's leading practictioner of the so-called square brush technique, and Logsdail too employed this to a modified extent. The picture is also comparable to the Venetian work of Luke Fildes and his brother-in-law Henry Woods. Fildes arrived in Venice, where Woods was already settled, in January 1881. He stayed two months and was to pay regular visits over the next ten years. Logsdail must have encountered him, especially as there are accounts of Fildes' meetings with Sargent. One of the most important of Fildes' Venetian pictures, Venetian Life, dated 1884, was sold in these Rooms on 24 November 1989 for £101,200.
A Venetian al Fresco belonged to Joseph Ruston of Lincoln, who formed a large collection of modern British and continental pictures, Old Masters and drawings. His British pictures include major examples of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Linnell, Hicks and many others, and no fewer than seventeen works by Logsdail. The present picture was one of two which he lent to the Royal Jubilee Exhibition at Manchester in 1887, the other being The Piazza, Venice, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1883 and now in the Birmingham City Art Gallery.