FDA-D.391-2010
Parts
Object number
FDA-D.391-2010
Object type
Identification
Title
A wheelwright's shop in Italy
A Tuscan farm
Pilkington
A Tuscan farm
Pilkington
Title Type
assigned by cataloguer
Previous title
collection
Previous title
collection
Comments
Pars was one of the most talented draughtsmen of his generation, but died tragically early, while in Rome, from a chill caught while standing sketching in Neptune's Grotto in Tivoli. At the age of twenty-two he accompanied the classical scholar Richard Chandler to Asia Minor, to draw the Greek remains, then in 1770 toured Switzerland with the future Lord Palmerston. In 1775 he was the recipient of the first bursary awarded by the Society of Dilettanti and travelled to Rome.
Most of Pars' surviving watercolours of Rome concentrate on the classical architecture. He bacame friendly with other British artists in the city, notably Thomas Jones, Francis Towne and John 'Warwick' Smith, but is not otherwise known to have pursued their daring experiments in landscape composition. The line of buildings arranged parallel to the picture plane, in which the main interest is the varying rhythms of the windows, some blank, some shuttered, some glazed, is the sort of motif more familiar in Jones' paintings, while the harsh cast shadow creating a dark strip across the foreground is also a device used by Jones and occasionally by Smith. Smith's view of the Temple of Concord in the British Museum has an array of crisply drawn carts and wheels in the foreground, and there is a possibility that this sheet, whose attribution to Pars has sometimes been questioned, is by him. The colouration, though, with its subtle range of greys, is very much that of Pars, while Smith tended to use a warmer palette with more orange. If the author of this intriguing drawing still eludes precise identification, it is evidence of the lively cross-currents exchanged among the artist colony in Rome during this period.
Most of Pars' surviving watercolours of Rome concentrate on the classical architecture. He bacame friendly with other British artists in the city, notably Thomas Jones, Francis Towne and John 'Warwick' Smith, but is not otherwise known to have pursued their daring experiments in landscape composition. The line of buildings arranged parallel to the picture plane, in which the main interest is the varying rhythms of the windows, some blank, some shuttered, some glazed, is the sort of motif more familiar in Jones' paintings, while the harsh cast shadow creating a dark strip across the foreground is also a device used by Jones and occasionally by Smith. Smith's view of the Temple of Concord in the British Museum has an array of crisply drawn carts and wheels in the foreground, and there is a possibility that this sheet, whose attribution to Pars has sometimes been questioned, is by him. The colouration, though, with its subtle range of greys, is very much that of Pars, while Smith tended to use a warmer palette with more orange. If the author of this intriguing drawing still eludes precise identification, it is evidence of the lively cross-currents exchanged among the artist colony in Rome during this period.
Other number
Pi 141
Description
Dimensions
height (actual size): 279mm
width (actual size): 387mm
width (actual size): 387mm
Materials & techniques note
Pencil and watercolour
Production
Person
Pars, William, 1742 - 1782 (Artist)
History and association
Object history note
Provenance: P.J. Henry; Agnew's, 1953; bequeathed to Eton by Alan Pilkington, 1973
Exhibited: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Treasures of Eton College Library, 1990, catalogue number 233 (exhibition catalogue, p.116, illustrated p.117); 'A Genius for Watercolour', Christie’s, London, 6 to 24 January 2003, catalogue number 48
Exhibited: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, Treasures of Eton College Library, 1990, catalogue number 233 (exhibition catalogue, p.116, illustrated p.117); 'A Genius for Watercolour', Christie’s, London, 6 to 24 January 2003, catalogue number 48
