Landscape with Mountain Brook

Maker Julius Caeser Ibbetson (British, 1759-1817)

Collections

British Paintings

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Daten.d.

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 22 3/8 × 29 1/4 in. (56.8 × 74.3 cm.) frame: 26 × 32 3/4 × 1 3/4 in. (66 × 83.2 × 4.4 cm.)

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Max Farrand

Label TextIbbetson is best known for his emulation of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting, in which the humble facts of rustic scenery are documented with an eye for charming detail. The present work shows him following a very different tradition of landscape painting: the idealized and often grandiloquent recreations of classical Italy produced by seventeenth-century French painters. In particular, Ibbetson has adopted the system of spatial organization characteristic of paintings by Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675). Like Dughet, Ibbetson uses tall trees at the right edge of the picture to frame the distant prospect and set it in relief. The darkness of the immediate foreground also helps to direct attention toward the more brilliantly illuminated distance. The eye is led into depth by the meandering course of the river, with a succession of overlapping promontories used to chart the receding planes. Additionally, the eye is arrested at intervals by three scenic accents: the rustic bridge in the middle distance, the castellated building on the distant hill, and the great mountain range in the extreme distance.
The dramatic topography represented in this painting was most likely modeled on the Lake District, where Ibbetson spent his later career, but the scene itself appears to be a composite or imaginary one. In addition to modeling the composition on seventeenth-century classical landscape conventions, Ibbetson inserted discrete elements borrowed from those Italianate scenes. The square towers, red-tile roof, and aqueduct-type bridge of the building on the hill are clearly modeled on Italian architecture. In addition, the tiny figures encircling the campfire at lower right resemble the classical shepherds and rustic peasants that recur as standard features of classical landscape painting. Apart from providing notes of human interest and color (one dressed in an eye-catching red cape), these figures are useful in establishing a sense of scale, for, in comparison with them, the mountainous scene appears vast indeed.
The lower right foreground of the painting gains additional interest from the artist's lively brushwork. The action of his brush is plainly traced in the texture of the paint--for example, in the steeply sloping bank, where green, yellow, and orange pigments are freely swirled together. The autumnal foliage of the birch trees is touched in with delicate, oval loops of paint, often leaving the centers empty in order to create an overall impression of shimmering light. Ibbetson paints the mountainous backdrop in an entirely different manner, with thin "washes" of blue-grey and blue-green paint that lend the peaks a smokey appearance. The visionary quality of the mountains enhances the idyllic quality that the artist has pursued throughout this rustic scene.

Status

Not on view

Object number41.1