Lot 40: GEORGE PRICE BOYCE, R.W.S. (1826-1897) NEWCASTLE FROM THE RABBIT BANKS, GATESHEAD ON TYNE

signed and dated G.P.Boyce.1864.5 l.l., watercolour, unframed 22 by 55 cm.; 8 1/2 by 21 1/2 in. The present view of Newcastle was painted by G.P. Boyce during a visit to the north east in the late summer of 1864. It seems that he had been encouraged to consider the industrialized landscapes around Newcastle as a subject for art by the ironmaster Isaac Lowthian Bell, who is recorded as having called on Boyce to buy three watercolours earlier in the same year. Two principal watercolours seem to have derived from Boyce's stay in the north: Windmill Hills, Gateshead (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and the present picture. Each shows a distant view of Newcastle itself, with the familiar landmark of the open lantern of St Nicholas' church, northwards across the unseen River Tyne, from Gateshead. It is not possible to identify Boyce's precise vantage point in the present drawing, as the area has been built over; however, it is likely that the Rabbit Banks on the drawing's title were somewhere close to the parish of Bensham. Newcastle from the Rabbit Banks, Gateshead on Tyne may be identified as the 1865 Old Water-Colour Society exhibit on the basis of a description of that drawing in the Athenaeum as "a distant view of a manufacturing town [which] interests us in its million lives and fortunes; its subtle colouring seems pathetic, and a glowing sky looks full of prophecy". (Athenaeum, 1865, p.594). EXHIBITED London, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1865 (128).