Lot 82: George Cuitt (1743-1818)

A river landscape, probably the banks of the River Swale, North Yorkshire, with a castle by a weir and washerwomen by a boat house
oil on canvas
30 x 48 in. (76.2 x 22 cm.)

Major the Rt. Hon. the Earl Cathcart, D.S.O., M.C.;
Christie's, London, 13 May 1949, lot 113 (as Ashford) (16 guineas to Wiggins).
Anonymous sale, Christie's, London, 18 November 1988, lot 62 (sold £6,600).

The present work is likely to depict a view on the banks of the River Swale, near Richmond, North Yorkshire, with the valley of Deepdale, whose unusual jagged rock-face was the result of melting glaciers cutting into the sides of the valley at the end of the Ice Age.

George Cuitt was born in Moulton, Yorkshire. In his early days as an artist, having shown a mature taste for drawing and design, he was sent to Italy at the expense of Sir Lawrence Dundas, the first Earl of Zetland (1766-1839), for whom he had painted a series of family portraits. Cuitt studied for six years in Rome, and also pursued landscape painting, a branch of art that was more congenial to his tastes. He returned to England in 1775, and exhibited a number of topographical landscapes at the Royal Academy from 1776-98.

Cuitt's passion for his native landscape led him to retire to Richmond, North Yorkshire, where he was fully employed in commissions of the estates and houses of the local gentry until his death in 1818.

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