Lot 428: Washington Allston (American, 1779-1843), "Morning

Washington Allston (American, 1779-1843), "Morning in Italy," oil on canvas, unsigned, bearing label reading "... 219 Washington & 10 Bromwell" en verso, 20 1/4 in. x 38 in., in an antique gilt frame. Note: Known as the first full-scale Romantic Artist, Washington Allston was extremely influential in expanding the "historical style" (as romantic idealism was called in the nineteenth century) of painting in America. Born in South Carolina in 1779, in the middle of the Revolutionary War, Allston was one of the first American artists to emerge in the newly founded country; during the first half of the nineteenth century, he was considered the greatest painter the United States had produced. Allston was educated at Harvard University and the Royal Academy in London, and soon after began his career as a painter and a poet. After studying in London and visiting Italy from 1804-1808, Allston returned to the United States, married his fiancé, Ann Channing, and lived in Boston for three years before returning to London to live. It was at this time in his life that Allston met Sir George Beaumont, a collector and amateur artist. Beaumont, who was both a patron and a member of the artistic community, ran in the same circle as Allston, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir David Wilkie, and William Wordsworth. He was a particular enthusiast of Allston's works, although he only commissioned two works from him: The Angel Releasing St. Peter from Prison, 1814-16, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and a now unlocated landscape. Another painting by Allston, Morning in Italy, was exhibited around the same time and was received well by the art critic of the Examiner, who said, "It is a landscape in which art elegantly mixes with and sets off Nature and tower and temple and the pensiveness of ruins are seen, just as morning breaks...The colours are well mingled into a dun and natural hue, which hovers over nearly the whole scene, giving it a soft solemnity, and to which the yellow-edged turrets, hills, and clouds, oppose a delicate sprightliness..." The painting illustrated here, although uninscribed, fits the description from the critic. The bright sunrise over the background town and the ancient temple ruins, which were characteristic of Allston's Italian landscapes, complement the foreground figures in classical garb, dwarfed by the awe-inspiring elements of Nature in this Romantic Landscape. The painting offered here, lot 428, is quite possibly a heretofore unrecorded version of Allston's exhibited Morning in Italy; or may be the painting exhibited by Allston which is referred to in Richardson's Washington Allston and Gerdts and Stebbins' A Man of Genius. References: Richardson, Edgar Preston. Washington Allston: A Study of the Romantic Artist in America. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1948, reprinted with additions in 1967. Gerdts, William and Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. A Man of Genius: The Art of Washington Allston. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1979. Owen, Felicity and David Blayney Brown. Collector of Genius: A Life of Sir George Beaumont. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1988.