Samuel Jackson AOWS Study for 'View of St Vincents Rocks, and the Old Hotwell House'

An original early 19th-century watercolour painting, Samuel Jackson AOWS, Study for 'View of St Vincents Rocks, and the Old Hotwell House'.

This interesting watercolour is by Samuel Jackson AOWS (1794–1869), an eminent Bristol artist who specialised in local landscape views of Bristol and its environs. Jackson is considered the 'father' of the Bristol School of artists; his Bristol watercolours of the mid-1820s were his most highly regarded work and have been called the most important part of the work of the School.

This watercolour is a study for Jackson's fine lithographic work, 'View of St Vincents Rocks, and the Old Hotwell House', which forms one of 'Three Views, illustrative of The Scenery of Bristol, and its Vicinity', printed and published in 1823 by Rowney and Forster, at their lithographic press, no.51, Rathbone Place, London. The trio of lithographs included works by Francis Danby (1793–1861), a lifelong friend of Jackson, and James Johnson (1803–1834), and they are now valuable and extremely rare (COPAC records Yale only). When writing of the folio in 'The Bristol School of Artists. Francis Danby and Painting in Bristol 1810-1840', Francis Greenacre remarks 'They are the finest engraved Bristol views but of considerable rarity' (1973).

The finished lithographic composition features a view of the Avon gorge, now within the boundaries of Bristol and famous as the site of Clifton Suspension Bridge, built from 1831. Jackson's view predates the bridge and presents a decidedly more rural landscape, dominated by St Vincent’s Rocks, named after the medieval hermitage and chapel of St Vincent once sited there. Hotwell House, which gave its name to the area of Bristol still known as Hotwells, was built as a pump room and lodgings servicing visitors to the hot springs. The artist knew this view well, as he lived at nearby Freeland Place.

The man resting in the present study is seen in the finished work in reverse at the right, providing compositional balance, interest in the foreground and setting the mood of the view as a whole. Whilst there are hints at human industry, Jackson's vision is largely a Romantic one, of picturesque calm, where our weary traveller rests by the roadside before the sublime cliffs beyond.

Provenance: From the Collection of Dr E.M. Brett of Hampstead. Abbott & Holder, 30 Museum Street, WC1A 1LH.

In watercolour with graphite underdrawing. On a light-weight wove paper.