The Meuse & the Rhine: Lt Col James Hamilton Stanhope 1788–1825
This wash drawing forms part of a fascinating collection of European sketches that we have for sale by Lt Col James Hamilton Stanhope (1788–1825). These are sketches done on tour, but they are no ordinary Grand Tour watercolours—they are the on-the-ground sketches of a soldier who was eyewitness to the Peninsular War and Battle of Waterloo.
Youngest son of Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope, James joined the British Army aged just fifteen by the advice of William Pitt the Younger (the 3rd Earl's second cousin). He served in Spain, Portugal, Flanders and France, acting as aide-de-camp to General Sir John Moore and Lord Lynedoch, before being appointed Assistant Quartermaster General in the Peninsula in 1813. He sustained a grape-shot wound in the spine at the storming of San Sebastian in 1813, which was to cause him immense suffering for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he remained in the army, and in 1815 he served as an assistant adjacent to the Duke of Wellington during the Waterloo Campaign. He took part in the Battle of Waterloo and the subsequent march upon Paris.
It is touching that the sketches, however, are notably devoid of military action: despite the service he witnessed, Stanhope finds ready subject in the sublime landscapes around the Alps and the Rhine Valley that drew his artistic contemporaries, including J.M.W. Turner. His compositions focus on the dramatic potential afforded by natural gorges and waterfalls, often overlooked by majestic castles and forts. Stanhope's strategically placed small sightseeing figures situate us in the landscape and provide a grand sense of scale.
These sketches have a rustic quality, the sense that they were done in the field rather than polished after the event—a sense enhanced by their pared back colouring and the coarse texture of the sketchbook wove. The paper supplier is 'Smith Warner & Co 211 Piccadilly', dating it to 1800–1820 (the company moved to 208 Piccadilly in 1821). Smith, Warner & Co was a leading artists' supplier of the day, and was one of three businesses singled out in 1811 by the drawing master and Royal Academy exhibitor John Cart Burges as having brought watercolours to the greatest perfection. Many notable artists used their paper, including John Varley, Eugene Delacroix and J.M.W. Turner, examples of whose work bear the Smith Warner stamp from 211 Piccadilly. These sketches can be more narrowly dated by their subjects to between 1818 and Stanhope's death in 1825: one drawing shows the fortress citadel at Huy in Belgium which was rebuilt by the Dutch in 1818, and one shows students of the University of Bonn (Kurkölnische Universität) which had closed in 1797 and re-opened in 1818.
In 1819 James Stanhope visited Europe in accompaniment of his future wife and her family, Frederica Louisa Murray, eldest daughter of the Earl of Mansfield—and these sketches quite possibly date from this tour. By this time, Stanhope was aide-de-camp to Prince Frederick, a position he held from 1815 until his death. And whilst his landscape subjects here show no explicit military presence, his views cannot be divorced from the nearby action he witnessed: Belgian views at Liège, Namur, Marche-les-Dames, Huy and Forest of Ardennes, all close to the River Meuse, strategically so important during the Napoleonic Wars. In addition, the collection includes two interesting military fortification maps, roughly sketched out by Stanhope, showing Fort d'Orange at Namur and Fort Alexander at Coblenz—meticulously annotated plans which reveal what is perhaps for Stanhope an inextricable connection between landscape and battleground in this region. Further examples of similar plans by Stanhope can be seen in his published 'Letters and Journals', edited by Gareth Glover, 2010 (a copy of which we have available for separate purchase, see our stock number JP-997).
Finally, the sketches take on an extra poignancy in light of Stanhope's tragic final years and premature death aged just thirty-six. In 1823 James's new young wife, Frederica Louisa, died shortly after the birth of their second son, who also succumbed within a few days of birth. Greatly afflicted, Stanhope moved into Kenwood House, the seat of his father-in-law, David William, 3rd Earl Mansfield, and in 1825 took his own life.
