Dovedale Church, Staffordshire

William Day was largely unknown until the discovery in 1951 of a large group of his drawings. An amateur artist, and a draper by trade, he exhibited at the Royal Academy as an ‘Honorary Exhibitor’, that is, not a professional artist, from 1782 to 1801. He lived largely in London, but much of his family was in Sussex, and he went there regularly to paint views including that of Old Roare Waterfall near Hastings in the present group (lot 194). His first Royal Academy exhibit, in 1782, was a View in Sussex.
Judy Egerton records William Day’s interests, noted in family documents, as ‘Geology, Minerolagy, and Painting’, in that order (J. Egerton, op.cit, p. 177). He was known to his descendants as ‘Rocky Day’, and formed one of the earliest private collections of minerals in England, always carrying a specimen bag with him on his sketching tours.

Initially self-taught, Day became friends with the artist John Webber (1751-1793) in 1787, when he was 23, and the two made sketching tours together. Webber’s influence on his drawing is clear in both his palette of soft colours and his practice of making detailed pencil drawings on the spot with colour notes, to be worked up later.

The two found a shared passion for rugged, mountainous landscapes, and Derbyshire was particularly suited to them both. They toured the area together in 1789, from which trip lots 192 and 193 come, as well as perhaps returning later. In several cases the two men drew the same view or subject, and it is interesting to note that they are often similarly powerful and comparable in skill.

Day’s watercolours, particularly those from his Derbyshire tours, have a remarkable clarity and crispness, and his focus and interest in the geology and plant-life of his subjects shine through in the sharp detail and intense, close cropped composition.
The two smaller studies in the present group, lots 196 and 197, although undated, may well be from Day’s last tour – an 1805 trip around Sussex, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, during which he predominantly made smaller drawings in pen or pencil, with sepia and grey washes, perhaps as illness made both more distant travel and the working up of larger sheets more difficult for him.