{"title":"Gandy ARA, Joseph Michael (1771–1843)","description":"\u003cp\u003eJoseph Michael Gandy ARA (1771–1843) was born in London, the son of Thomas Gandy, a waiter at White’s Club in St James’s. He showed talent for drawing at an early age and was taken on as a pupil by the architect James Wyatt at the age of fifteen. In 1789 he entered the Royal Academy Schools and the following year was awarded the Gold Medal for a drawing of ‘A Triumphal Arch’.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 1794 he travelled to Italy at the expense of John Martindale, proprietor of White's, where he spent three years, mainly in Rome, winning a medal in the prestigious Concorso Clementino sponsored by the Accademia di San Luca in 1795. Returning to England in 1797, he found employment as a draughtsman in the office of Sir John Soane. He practised on his own from 1801 and in 1803 was elected ARA, however, ultimately he built very little in his career, having a reputation as a difficult individual to deal with. It is for his innovative visionary work, creating architectural fantasies, playing upon historical, literary and mythological themes, that Gandy is best known.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis work included the Phoenix Fire and Pelican Life Insurance Offices in London (1804–1805, destroyed c.1920); the gallery at Doric House at Sion Hill in Bath for Charles Spackman (1818); and the remodelling of Swerford Park house in Oxfordshire for General Bolton (1824–1829).\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"attrib-joseph-gandy-ara-pons-fabricius-on-the-tiber-rome-c-1830-watercolour-jw-114","title":"Attrib. Joseph Gandy ARA, Pons Fabricius on the Tiber, Rome – c.1830 watercolour","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn original c.1830 watercolour painting, Attrib. Joseph Gandy ARA, Pons Fabricius on the Tiber, Rome.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis attractive small watercolour shows the Pons Fabricius, or Ponte dei Quattro Capi, the oldest Roman bridge in Rome, still existing in its original state. Joseph Michael Gandy ARA (1771–1843) was an artist, visionary architect and architectural theorist, who worked extensively with the architect Sir John Soane RA FSA FRS. Gandy spent time in Italy between 1794 and 1797. This painting has historically been attributed to Gandy and dated to around 1830 by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs an assistant to Sir John Soane from 1798, Gandy was set to work on far more than the routine office tasks on which other pupils were engaged. Soane appreciated his skilled draughtsmanship and compositional skills; the present drawing, although small, has a notable sense of architectural structure, in the three-dimensional layering of buildings, bridge and background. The loose style—the way in which reflections shimmer on the water and the foreground path and figures seem to seep into their surroundings—is evocative of Gandy's 'visionary' work, in which he would conceive architectural fantasies with a feeling of the sublime. Gandy created many wonderfully inventive architectural perspectives to illustrate Soane’s work over the course of his career, and also exhibited architectural fantasies—playing upon historical, literary and mythological themes—at the Royal Academy under his own name. It is for this innovative work on which Gandy’s enduring fame rests.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eProvenance: From the Collection of Dr E.M. Brett of Hampstead.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Somerset \u0026 Wood","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52017866178889,"sku":"JW-114","price":280.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0930\/4306\/5161\/files\/jw-114.jpg?v=1743502723"}],"url":"https:\/\/somersetandwood.com\/fr-eu\/collections\/gandy-ara-joseph-michael-1771-1843.oembed","provider":"Somerset \u0026 Wood Fine Art","version":"1.0","type":"link"}