John Hayter Le Cadeau

Caroline Pearson (1800–1879): Drawings of Switzerland & the Pyrenees

This work forms part of a beautiful collection of pictures, principally by Caroline (Lyons) Pearson (1800–1879) and dating from the 1830s. The subjects comprise Swiss landscapes, along with other Continental views in the Pyrenees, France and Spain, as well as a few pictures of or by other family members.

The particular interest in Pearson's landscapes lies in her drawing technique, which combines brown wash with charcoal, producing an effect similar to that of lithography. The collection includes three beautiful portrait lithographs by Painter-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria, John Hayter (1800–1895), and it appears that Pearson's drawings emulate the dramatic effects of these works. Lithography was a relatively new medium in the 1830s, embraced by artists looking to reproduce the stirring shifts of tone that could be achieved with charcoal or black chalk. Some of Pearson's landscapes use charcoal so liberally across the sheet that they appear in turn to be influenced by the velvety tonal graduation that printing from ink on stone could achieve.

The result is that Pearson's drawings are imbued with a sense of romance, evoking the feeling of a place, not just representing it topographically. Her landscapes are a fine example of the popularity of Switzerland in the early 19th century thanks to Romantic poets such as Byron and Shelley and the Romantic imagination through which these landscapes were conceived.

Caroline Pearson was of considerable financial means, by birth and through marriage. She was daughter of John Lyons of Antigua, who owned St Austin’s, an 190-acre estate in the New Forest, Lymington, Hampshire. She had a sister, Catherine, who is also recorded as an artist; there is a collection of watercolours, depicting her travels between the French Pyrenees and the Alps, in the Radnorshire Museum at Llandrindod Wells. It is likely that the sisters travelled and sketched together. In 1820 Caroline married Henry Shepherd Pearson (1776–1840), who was acting Governor of Penang from 1807 to 1808. When Henry died in 1840 they were residing at Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France.

Caroline moved in privileged circles and would have associated with influential figures of the day. Her landscape drawings attest to this, with subjects including a view from Lord Brougham's garden at Cannes, and views at M. Haldimand's Lake Geneva. Lord Brougham, newly arrived at Cannes in 1834, played a fascinating role in the making of modern Cannes, and English-Swiss Jane Marcet (née Haldimand) was an innovative writer of popular, explanatory science books, whose works were an early inspiration for the young Michael Faraday.