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Lot Essay
Sand, Sea and Sky represents the Aesthetic ideal of ‘art for art’s sake’ at its boldest. In a series of seascapes painted in oil and pastel over a sixteen year period Stott attempted to record a sense of atmosphere and beauty in form, light and colour on the Cumbrian coast.
Although all of the pictures were painted within a mile of his house in Ravenglass, the exact location was not important to him. Instead, he recorded titles in his notebooks such as ‘iii) Tide rising; grey sky; green sea with big waves; iv) Blue sea; pools; sunny’ (quoted in Brown, op. cit., p. 77). In this series he echoed the work of artists like Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas and James Whistler, all of whom had spent time on the Normandy coast sketching the shifting moods and colours of the coastline. In October 1865 Whistler and Courbet stayed at the fashionable resort of Trouville, each experimenting with their technique in order to portray the changing effects of light and movement (fig.1). Whistler later added the figure of Courbet to the foreground of Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville (fig. 2) as a souvenir of their time together. Stott would certainly have been aware of this series as well as the pastels produced by Degas in 1869 (fig. 3): vistas of empty sand, sea and sky which capture the beauty and atmosphere of the coast. Like Degas, Stott favoured pastel for his plein air sketches from 1883 as the medium allowed for a faster response to the changes in light and weather.
According to an inscription on the reverse, this picture was once in the collection of Dr Raymond S. Palmer, the husband and manager of the American opera singer Emma Nevada (1859-1940). The couple met in Paris and were married in the city to great fanfare in 1886. It may well have been that, as a fellow expatriate in Paris, Palmer knew Stott and acquired the picture directly from the artist.
Although all of the pictures were painted within a mile of his house in Ravenglass, the exact location was not important to him. Instead, he recorded titles in his notebooks such as ‘iii) Tide rising; grey sky; green sea with big waves; iv) Blue sea; pools; sunny’ (quoted in Brown, op. cit., p. 77). In this series he echoed the work of artists like Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas and James Whistler, all of whom had spent time on the Normandy coast sketching the shifting moods and colours of the coastline. In October 1865 Whistler and Courbet stayed at the fashionable resort of Trouville, each experimenting with their technique in order to portray the changing effects of light and movement (fig.1). Whistler later added the figure of Courbet to the foreground of Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville (fig. 2) as a souvenir of their time together. Stott would certainly have been aware of this series as well as the pastels produced by Degas in 1869 (fig. 3): vistas of empty sand, sea and sky which capture the beauty and atmosphere of the coast. Like Degas, Stott favoured pastel for his plein air sketches from 1883 as the medium allowed for a faster response to the changes in light and weather.
According to an inscription on the reverse, this picture was once in the collection of Dr Raymond S. Palmer, the husband and manager of the American opera singer Emma Nevada (1859-1940). The couple met in Paris and were married in the city to great fanfare in 1886. It may well have been that, as a fellow expatriate in Paris, Palmer knew Stott and acquired the picture directly from the artist.