Lot 85: Jean Le Capelain (St. Helier 1812-1848)

Jean Le Capelain (St. Helier 1812-1848)
Returning home with the catch
pencil and watercolour heightened with white and with scratching out, on paper
15¼ x 23 5/8 in. (38.7 x 60 cm.)

JEAN LE CAPELAIN (1812-1848)
Lots 85-96


Born in St. Helier in 1812, Le Capelain began his career as an artist in the medium of lithography but in 1834, turned his attention to painting in watercolour, many of his early works depicting shipping becalmed in early morning mists. As his confidence increased he used different techniques with both watercolour and paper to convey more complex and extreme atmospheric effects and his work has often been described as resembling the work of Turner. Like Turner, Le Capelain did not make a direct copy of the landscape, but rather tried to convey how the landscape made him feel. Churning seas and ominous skies, storm clouds, breaking sunshine and the vigorous painting of waves, all created a landscape that was moving and changing.

As a result of a visit to the island by Queen Victoria in 1846, Le Capelain was commissioned by the States of Jersey to paint twenty-six watercolours to be presented to the Queen. Six of the scenes executed were of the Royal visit itself and the remaining twenty of the scenery of Jersey. The watercolours were brought by a delegation to Windsor and as a result a series of lithographs was produced, The Queen's Visit to Jersey which became the corner stone of the iconography of Jersey. These watercolours prompted Queen Victoria to commission Le Capelain to create a series of watercolours of the Isle of Wight, but while there he contracted tuberculosis. He returned to Jersey in 1848 and died there in October barely 36 years old.
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 20% on the buyer's premium.