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Lot Essay
"By the time Glover made his first journey to the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland in 1793, the Lake District had already been well established as a favoured destination of British tourists. The poet Thomas Gray and the agriculturist Arthur Young had made expeditions in 1769; Rev William Gilpin, the apostle of Picturesque beauty, and Thomas Pennant, the antiquarian, both visited in 1772. By 1789 Mrs Piozzi was observing: "there is a Rage for the Lakes, we travel to them, we row upon them, we write about them." Indeed it has been calculated that in the last quarter of the eighteenth century at least fifteen accounts of Lake District tours were published as books, quite apart from many circulated in manuscript and appearing in periodicals. Thomas West first published his popular Guide to the Lakes in 1778. By the turn of the century, it had gone through no fewer than seven editions.
Not only writers but artists, too, recorded the regions particular Picturesque beauties. Sir George Beaumont, Joseph Farington and Thomas Hearne painted there in the 1770s, Gainsborough in 1783 and Francis Towne in 1786. Farington published a volume of engraved views in 1789 and Glover's one time teacher John "Warwick" Smith also issued a series of prints in three parts between 1791 and 1795.
Glover certainly took to the landscape with great enthusiasm. Surviving sketchbooks indicate that he made at least nine tours between 1793 and 1824 and at one stage (c.1818-20), he owned a house on Ullswater, Berwick Farm. The very first time he exhibited at the Royal Academy (in 1794) Glover included a view of Rydal water, and approximately a third of the pictures he exhibited with the Society of Painters in Watercolours and the Society of Painters in Oil and Watercolours were of Lake District scenes.
In turn, the popularity of these works encouraged other artists and tourists. Farington noted in his diary that Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775-1862) 'in consequence of the great success of Glover in selling his drawings of views of the Lakes has gone to the country accompanied by Havil (William Havell 1782-1857) to store themselves with subjects for drawings.'
Despite increasing competition, Lake District subjects (especially views around Ullswater) were to remain a staple of Glover's repertoire throughout his career. He named his farm in Tasmania after the village of Patterdale and even sent two Ullswater pictures painted in Van Diemen's Land to his 1835 London exhibition. Ullswater is the second largest of the region's lakes, and its surrounding topography ranges from gentle wooded hills in its northern reaches to the more imposing peaks of Place Fell and Helvellyn at its southern end." (D Hansen John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque, Hobart, 2004, p.172)
Not only writers but artists, too, recorded the regions particular Picturesque beauties. Sir George Beaumont, Joseph Farington and Thomas Hearne painted there in the 1770s, Gainsborough in 1783 and Francis Towne in 1786. Farington published a volume of engraved views in 1789 and Glover's one time teacher John "Warwick" Smith also issued a series of prints in three parts between 1791 and 1795.
Glover certainly took to the landscape with great enthusiasm. Surviving sketchbooks indicate that he made at least nine tours between 1793 and 1824 and at one stage (c.1818-20), he owned a house on Ullswater, Berwick Farm. The very first time he exhibited at the Royal Academy (in 1794) Glover included a view of Rydal water, and approximately a third of the pictures he exhibited with the Society of Painters in Watercolours and the Society of Painters in Oil and Watercolours were of Lake District scenes.
In turn, the popularity of these works encouraged other artists and tourists. Farington noted in his diary that Ramsay Richard Reinagle (1775-1862) 'in consequence of the great success of Glover in selling his drawings of views of the Lakes has gone to the country accompanied by Havil (William Havell 1782-1857) to store themselves with subjects for drawings.'
Despite increasing competition, Lake District subjects (especially views around Ullswater) were to remain a staple of Glover's repertoire throughout his career. He named his farm in Tasmania after the village of Patterdale and even sent two Ullswater pictures painted in Van Diemen's Land to his 1835 London exhibition. Ullswater is the second largest of the region's lakes, and its surrounding topography ranges from gentle wooded hills in its northern reaches to the more imposing peaks of Place Fell and Helvellyn at its southern end." (D Hansen John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque, Hobart, 2004, p.172)