Lot Essay
This study, devoid of any human or animal presence, epitomises the spirit of Landseer's romantic and evocative Highland landscapes. The young artist first visited Scotland in 1824, and it is probable that his earliest landscape sketches date from this year. In referring to such works, Richard Ormond writes:
'The prevailing tonality of the landscape sketches is gray and somber, broken and stormy effects of cloud and sky, but shot through with brilliant passages of light. Nature is recorded in its most fleeting and dramatic circumstances, the weather sweeping across wild expanses of country, and vividly experienced' (R. Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, Catalogue for the Exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Tate Gallery, London, 1981, p. 91).
We are grateful to Richard Ormond for his help in identifying this work.
'The prevailing tonality of the landscape sketches is gray and somber, broken and stormy effects of cloud and sky, but shot through with brilliant passages of light. Nature is recorded in its most fleeting and dramatic circumstances, the weather sweeping across wild expanses of country, and vividly experienced' (R. Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, Catalogue for the Exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Tate Gallery, London, 1981, p. 91).
We are grateful to Richard Ormond for his help in identifying this work.