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TITLE:
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A Loggia in Sorrento
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WORK DATE:
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1834
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CATEGORY:
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Paintings
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MATERIALS:
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Oil on paper on panel
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MARKINGS:
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Signed with the initials FE
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SIZE:
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h: 39 x w: 51 cm / h: 15.4 x w: 20.1 in
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REGION:
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Norwegian
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STYLE:
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Plein Air
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PRICE*:
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Contact Gallery for Price
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DESCRIPTION:
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Following Thomas Fearnley’s untimely death at the age of thirty-nine, Johan Christian Dahl proposed in a letter to the board of the Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo that the museum purchase from Fearnley’s widow a group of his nature studies. Dahl describes them as better than the finished paintings; because in them he gave his true self - as he was and as he felt when face to face with nature.
Thomas Fearnley is generally considered Dahl’s most gifted pupil. Yet to call him a pupil in the normal sense of the word is misleading. By the time Fearnley met Dahl in Dresden, he had completed more than a decade of training and had become a recognized artist in his own right in his native Norway. Thus it would be more accurate to describe him as a younger colleague who won Dahl’s respect, admiration and friendship. Fearnley remained in Dresden for eighteen months in 1829-30, during which he was strongly influenced by Dahl and undoubtedly learnt a great deal about his direct manner of approaching nature. He soon adopted Dahl’s broad, free handling of paint and developed a remarkable virtuosity in his own oil sketches from nature . From Dresden, Fearnley travelled to southern Germany, arriving in Munich in 1832, where the painters Christian Morgenstern, Hermann Kauffman, Jörgen Sonne and Wilhelm Bendz were his friends. Later in 1832 he travelled to Rome, where his primary interest – as evidenced by his oil sketches – focussed on capturing the intensity of southern light. He travelled in Italy between 1832 and 1835, keeping company with Berthel Thorvaldsen and his circle of Danish and German artists in Rome . On his return journey from Italy he spent three months in Switzerland where he was much taken by the grandeur of the Swiss Alps. In September 1835 he arrived in Paris where he stayed for six months. He exhibited at the Salon and greatly admired the striking compositions of Eugène Isabey, Théodore Gudin and Horace Vernet. After returning briefly to Norway, he moved to London for two years. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837 and 1838 and toured the Lake District with the English painter Charles West Cope . After a brief sojourn in Dresden, where he visited his friend Dahl, he returned to Norway and was appointed a board member of the National Gallery and the Royal School of Drawing. In 1840 he married Cecilie Cathrine Andresen. He travelled with his wife to Amsterdam, Düsseldorf and Munich, where he died of typhus in 1842 .
In 1832 Thomas Fearnley left Munich for Rome and stayed in Italy between 1832 and 1835, keeping company with Berthel Thorvaldsen and his circle of Danish and German artists in Rome. Fearnley’s best work was executed in 1832-34. This is documented by a large number of very fine plein-air sketches that have survived to the present day.
In this delicate, unusually large sketch, Fearnley’s interest is focused on the various shades of grey. These are areas of shadow produced by the play of direct and indirect sunlight on the foreground and middle ground and on the white walls of the loggia and the adjacent arcade. The young woman seated on the low wall in the foreground is probably identical with the young woman depicted in Moonlight over the Gulf – Miss F. Worthington. The seated male figure shown sketching at the far end of the arcade is Charles West Cope who also was Fearnley’s travel companion on his journey through the Lake District some years later.
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PROVENANCE:
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Private collection, Norway
Private collection, Denmark
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EXHIBITION HISTORY:
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Thomas Fearnley, 1802-1842, exhib. cat., Modum, Stiftelsen Modums Blaafarveværk, 1986, no. 62, illus.
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