.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Leighton was frequently drawn south to the Mediterranean and African sun for the sake of his health. On these tours, undertaken over a period of more than forty years, he frequently made small landscape sketches. These were sometimes used as aides-mémoires for larger compositions, but were more usually executed for their own sake. This sketch was painted in 1895 when during May he travelled from Tangier and Tlemcen to Algiers. He had previously visited the city in 1857.
In a letter of 2 June 1895 he informed George Frederic Watts that he had been employed in 'a little quiet, unconventional, but most enjoyable sketching (landscape bits) from nature - it is the most irresponsible restful thing I can do & fills time delightfully - (I have made a few very tidy little sketches, I think).'
Consisting essentially of abstract planes of tone and colour, in which brilliant light and shade are contrasted, the board is painted with much greater freedom than, for example, the more tightly observed views of Capri which the artist first painted some forty years earlier.
In a letter of 2 June 1895 he informed George Frederic Watts that he had been employed in 'a little quiet, unconventional, but most enjoyable sketching (landscape bits) from nature - it is the most irresponsible restful thing I can do & fills time delightfully - (I have made a few very tidy little sketches, I think).'
Consisting essentially of abstract planes of tone and colour, in which brilliant light and shade are contrasted, the board is painted with much greater freedom than, for example, the more tightly observed views of Capri which the artist first painted some forty years earlier.