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Lot Essay
'Those orbed towers obscure and vast,
That light the Loire with sunset last;
Those fretted groups of shaft and spire,
That crest Amboise's cliff with fire,
When, far beneath, in moonlight fail
The winds that shook the pausing sail'
(John Ruskin, The Broken Chain, Part V, xiv: Poems 2.169-170)
Ruskin wrote of this watercolour forty years after its execution that it was 'Representing the castle as about seven hundred feet above the river (it is perhaps eighty or ninety;) with sunset light on it, in imitation of Turner; and the moon rising behind it in imitation of Turner; and some steps and balustrades (which are not there) going down to the river, in imitation of Turner; with the fretwork of St. Hubert's Chapel done very carefully in my own way, - I thought perhaps a little better than Turner.' It embodies the enormous influence of Turner on Ruskin, and is one of Ruskin's most successful 'Turnerian' views. Turner had depicted the Château in 1826 as part of his Views on the Loire series (three watercolours are now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), although his renderings do not take such a dramatic viewpoint and are set in a softly glowing sunset, rather than the sharp moonrise seen here.
Ruskin travelled to the continent in aged 21 in 1840-41, and on his return began writing his poem The Broken Chain, which was set at the Château of Amboise. The present watercolour was intended to be engraved by Thomas Jeavons to illustrate that poem, but Ruskin was unhappy with his work for Turner's Rivers of France, and subsequently his father appointed Edward Goodall to the project.
Robert Ellis Cunliffe was a Lancastrian solicitor who retired to 'The Croft' at Ambleside and formed a remarkable collection of Ruskin drawings following the artists death in 1900. The collection remained in his family until 1981, when some sheets were given to Abbot Hall, Kendal, and seven to King's College, Cambridge.
That light the Loire with sunset last;
Those fretted groups of shaft and spire,
That crest Amboise's cliff with fire,
When, far beneath, in moonlight fail
The winds that shook the pausing sail'
(John Ruskin, The Broken Chain, Part V, xiv: Poems 2.169-170)
Ruskin wrote of this watercolour forty years after its execution that it was 'Representing the castle as about seven hundred feet above the river (it is perhaps eighty or ninety;) with sunset light on it, in imitation of Turner; and the moon rising behind it in imitation of Turner; and some steps and balustrades (which are not there) going down to the river, in imitation of Turner; with the fretwork of St. Hubert's Chapel done very carefully in my own way, - I thought perhaps a little better than Turner.' It embodies the enormous influence of Turner on Ruskin, and is one of Ruskin's most successful 'Turnerian' views. Turner had depicted the Château in 1826 as part of his Views on the Loire series (three watercolours are now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), although his renderings do not take such a dramatic viewpoint and are set in a softly glowing sunset, rather than the sharp moonrise seen here.
Ruskin travelled to the continent in aged 21 in 1840-41, and on his return began writing his poem The Broken Chain, which was set at the Château of Amboise. The present watercolour was intended to be engraved by Thomas Jeavons to illustrate that poem, but Ruskin was unhappy with his work for Turner's Rivers of France, and subsequently his father appointed Edward Goodall to the project.
Robert Ellis Cunliffe was a Lancastrian solicitor who retired to 'The Croft' at Ambleside and formed a remarkable collection of Ruskin drawings following the artists death in 1900. The collection remained in his family until 1981, when some sheets were given to Abbot Hall, Kendal, and seven to King's College, Cambridge.