Sir George Howland Beaumont Temple of Jupiter, Lake Avernus

An original c.1821 watercolour painting, Sir George Beaumont, Temple of Jupiter, Lake Avernus.

This apparently unassuming Claudian composition in sepia wash encapsulates some of the most important impulses behind the development of British landscape painting and the creation of Britain's national collection of art. The artist is Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753–1827), who was the leading arbiter of artistic tastes in his day and a major sponsor behind the creation of the National Gallery in London.

Likely painted during Beaumont's second trip to Italy in 1821, the view is a classical picturesque composition looking across the volcanic crater lake Avernus, near Pozzuoli to the north of Naples. The balanced composition, with clear foreground, middle ground and distant horizon, framed by trees, recalls similar views at Avernus by 18th-century landscape artist Richard Wilson (1713–1782)—based in their turn on the pictorial precepts of the 17th-century classical landscape painter Claude Lorrain. Avernus was a particular draw because of its classical associations: according to classical mythology the area, known as the Phlegraean Fields, was associated with the Infernal Regions and Avernus was supposed to have been an entrance to the underworld. The ancient remains of temples to Apollo and Jupiter sit evocatively on the shores of the lake.

Beaumont embraced the developments of Romantic poetry; he was a friend of the Lake Poets and William Wordsworth in particular, to whom he rented the farm at his country estate, Coleorton Hall in Leicestershire, in 1806. He was not, however, so receptive to new trends in art, such as the radical colouring of Turner. Beaumont's views were staunchly conservative, favouring the academic ethos of Reynolds and he opposed anything which he saw as threatening to the canon of the Old Masters. Beaumont was able to uphold these views in positions of significant cultural influence, on the monuments committee for St Paul’s Cathedral and as the founding director of the British Institution.

Beaumont's visit to Italy in 1821, during which he met Antonio Canova, re-invigorated his belief in the need to educate British taste by establishing a public gallery of Old Masters. He began to campaign vigorously for the creation of a national gallery. He had by this time amassed a significant personal collection of such works; he offered sixteen of his paintings to the nation on the condition that the British Government would buy the collection of John Julius Angerstein and that a suitable building be found to display the pictures—and hence the National Gallery was born.

Provenance: From the Collection of Dr E.M. Brett of Hampstead.

On wove paper. This is one of two works by Beaumont that we have for sale (see stock number JU-406).