Anon. River Sluice Gate with Figure

Picturesque Sketches: 1838 Drawings after James Duffield Harding

This drawing forms part of a collection of pictures that we have for sale by a single hand, which are an interesting record of the processes of drawing education in the early 19th century. A number of the drawings are dated 1838, and their subjects evidence a taste for the picturesque—for overgrown rustic buildings, abundant foliage, crumbling monuments and finely balanced landscape compositions, both at home and on the Continent.

There are three accomplished and atmospheric watercolours in the collection, which appear to be from life and indicate that our artist possessed significant skill and flair. The graphite drawings, which are likely after 19th-century drawing masters such as James Duffield Harding (1798–1863), show the grounding education that drawing manuals provided to amateur artists in the early 19th century. The development of lithography in the 1830s and 1840s enabled masters' drawings to be reproduced for the use of pupils and students more widely and cheaply than ever before. Harding's Lithographic Drawing Book (1832), Elementary Art, or the Use of the Lead Pencil (1834) and Sketches at Home and Abroad (1836) were influential examples of such drawing manuals.

The drawings in this collection represent a significant further step in the 'democratisation' of the practice of drawing and the movement of art instruction away from the academies into the bourgeois Victorian home.