Oil painting entitled 'Near Virginia Water' by Richard Barrett Davis. Great Britain, ca. early 19th century.

Oil painting

Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857

John Sheepshanks (1787-1863), art collector, was the son of the wealthy cloth manufacturer and merchant Joseph Sheepshanks. John succeeded his father in the family firm of York and Sheepshanks in Leeds. After his retirement from business in 1827, John Sheepshanks moved to London. He made several trips to the Continent but lived relatively modestly. Apart from art, Sheepshanks was interested in gardening and was a member of both the Royal Horticultural Society and the Athenaeum Club. Sheepshanks liked to pursue his interest in art by entertaining painters and engravers at informal Wednesday “at homes”.

Sheepshanks began his interest in art through collecting books of Dutch and Flemish prints. Before he moved to London he made purchases at the Northern Society in Leeds. In London he actively patronized artists including Landseer, Mulready, Leslie, Callcott and Cooke. His taste was for contemporary early Victorian cabinet pictures of anecdotal, sentimental, and instructive subjects, as well as scenes from literature. His collection was unique for its time being the only large scale one of contemporary British paintings. He gave his collection of 233 oils and 298 watercolours, etchings and drawings to the South Kensington museum in 1857 (see departmental file on Sheepshanks). The deed of gift stipulated that “a well-lighted and otherwise suitable” gallery should be built to house his collection near the buildings of the Science and Art department on the South Kensington Site. This followed Sheepshanks’ wish to create a ‘gallery of British art’. The Sheepshanks Gallery was opened in 1857.

Historical significance: Richard Barrett Davis (1782-1854), landscape and animal painter, was born in Watford, Hertfordshire. His father became huntsman to George III's private harriers in 1789 and subsequently moved the family to Windsor. It was here that King George III saw and admired the sketches of the young Richard Barrett Davis. King George III (1738-1820) persuaded Sir Francis Bourgeois (1756-1807), landscapist to the King, who did not normally take pupils, to tutor the young Barrett Davis. It is also believed that the artist studied under Sir William Beechey (1753-1839). Richard Barrett Davis began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1802, where he continued to exhibit annually for the next fifty years. From 1808 he began to exhibit at the British Institution. He was to show 268 paintings there during his lifetime, and he exhibited at the Society of British Arts in 1827. He had an aptitude for painting animals and was made 'Animal Painter' to George IV (1762-1830) in 1828. He later held a similar appointment to Queen Victoria (1819-1901).

Virginia Water is a natural lake that lies within Windsor Great Park, situated in the counties Surrey and Berkshire. It is created from a body of water that is documented with the same name in the seventeenth century. This name may have been given to the lake in the sixteenth century in recollection of Elizabeth I (1533-1603), who was named the Virgin Queen. Growing up in Windsor Richard Barrett Davis would have been familiar with this natural landscape.

The close observation of this small fragment of the shore of Virginia Water and its environs recalls landscape sketches of contemporaries including the acclaimed Landscape artist John Constable (1776-1837) and Gainsborough (1727-1788), who produced landscapes alongside the portraits that he is best associated with. It has been suggested that Davis’ loose style of painting that creates different textures, such as the foliage and the rough bark of the trees is close to that of Gainsborough (See Grant p.262). The familiarity of the artist with his landscape is conveyed in the intimacy of the painting. The red shawl of the standing figure draws our attention to her and her companion. These figures are framed between the two tall trees in the painting. The slightly worn fence that runs from the left of the canvas along the bank of the lake guides our eyes to the house that stands in the shadows cast by the trees in the distance of the painting. The calm water of the lake, dotted with water lilies, combined with the seated figure’s past time of fishing, conveys the tranquillity of this rural setting.


In his entry on the artist in A Chronological History of the Old English Landscape Painters, Grant has acknowledged Davis’ talent as a landscape painter. More famous for his paintings of dogs, horses and livestock, such landscapes were often ignored by his biographers. Sheepshanks focussed on British contemporary paintings when he was forming his collection. When he left his collection to the Nation, he intended that it would form the national collection of British Art, equivalent to that of European art at recently established National Gallery, Considering the popularity of the artist’s animal works, it is interesting that this is the only painting by Davis that Sheepshanks acquired. With landscapes in his collection by artists including Constable, this choice of a Davis landscape could be seen to reflect the collector’s taste. It may also suggest that Sheepshanks, unlike many of his contemporaries, recognized Davis’ talent in the genre of landscape painting.

References:

Grant, M.H. A Chronological History of the Old English Landscape Painters (3 volumes), vol.2, p.262.

FA.68[O]