Oil painting entitled 'A Hilly Landscape' by John Glover. Great Britain, ca. 1790-1849.

Bought from Mr. W. Smith, Montpellier House, Waverley Street, Nottingham, on the 8th May 1880 for £200.

Historical significance: John Glover (1767-1849) began his career as a drawing-master at Lichfield, Staffordshire, from where he sent drawings to London each year. In the 1790s he began to also work in oils, some of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1795 onwards. His works were more highly valued than those of any other artist at the first exhibition of the Society of Painters in Watercolour (1805). He was elected president of the Society in 1807 and again in 1814-15. Working also as a painter of large oils, Glover was seen as a rival to the landscape artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), much to the annoyance of Constable. Glover visited Paris in 1814, where he won a gold medal at the Salon for his Paysages Composè and he later travelled to Italy. In the 1820s he staged a series of one-man shows where he placed his work among the pictures of Claude Lorraine (1604-1682) and Richard Wilson (1713-1782) as for the public to judge. In 1829 the artist emigrated to Australia and settled in Tasmania, where he lived until his death, farming sheep and painting landscapes for wealthy immigrants. He was one of the first artists to try and faithfully depict the Australian landscape.

The landscape in this painting has not been identified but appears to be British. Glover was a keen observer of nature and throughout his career tried to make accurate records of landscapes both in his sketchbooks and paintings. It is therefore likely that this scene is of an actual location. Glover wrote later in his life of the English landscape that “This was my early school. These were the scenes near my native place which helped make me a Landscape painter” (Hansen, pp.40-1). He travelled extensively in England and Wales on sketching tours from the 1790s until he emigrated to Australia in 1829. He used the sketches made during these tours as the basis for his landscape paintings. The expanse of rolling hills that lead our eye in to the distance of the painting suggest that this work depicts a scene from Northern England. Tom Winfield of Chester reported seeing a painting of Brough Castle by the artist in 1809 (SPWC, 1806, catalogue 301). A comparison with the form of the ruins and its setting, perched on a promentry and surrounded by hills depicted in 165-1880 and that of Brough Castle show a striking similarity. This suggests that 165-1880 could be a depiction of this old fortress and its environs, possibly the same painting seen by Tom Winfield in 1809.

The dark palette of this landscape reflects that of Dutch artists of the seventeenth century. Glover would have been exposed to works by artists including Rembrandt (1606-1669)and the animal painter Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691) when he visited the collections of both Lord Harrowby (1762-1847) and Mr. Ackermann (1764-1834). The influence of Cuyp can be seen in the group of grazing cattle in the centre foreground of the painting. The grouping of the cattle is very similar to Glover’s own work Cattle: The last Gleam of the Setting Sun from 1816 (M J M Carter Collection, Art Gallery of South Australia, Hansen, p. 65).

165-1880