Drawing, Design for a ceiling possibly at Thornhill House, Dorset by Sir James Thornhill, pen and ink, red chalk and wash, early 18th century

Drawing in red chalk gone over in pen and ink, the shadows emphasised with wash. A design for the spandrels of a ceiling, possibly the drawing room at Thornhill House, Dorset. The ceiling painting has since been destroyed.

Provenance: purchased from W.J. Smith in 1891

This drawing came to the museum as part of an album containing drawings and engravings chiefly by Thornhill. The album was dismantled and the works remounted.

This drawing may be a design for the now destroyed ceiling of the drawing room at Thornhill House, Dorset, the old family manor that Thornhill purchased following its earlier loss from the family when it was sold in 1686. C.M. Metz made an engraving of what is now thought to be the final design, published in Imitations of Ancient and Modern Drawings (1st ed 1789, 2nd ed with text 1798) (2nd ed see NAL 100.L.14). The V&A holds an example of the engraving (E.1175-1886), which was based on a drawing in the collection of Mr Tassaert (possibly J.P.A. Tassaert (1727-88) the sculptor, or his relative P.J. Tassaert (1732-1803) the painter and engraver). The designs in the four corners of this drawing are almost identical to the four corners of the print but the latter contains a circular framed medallion at the centre of the design in which Minerva is seen crowning a portrait of Thornhill. John Hutchins in The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset (1861-73) refers to 'A beautiful ceiling in the drawing-room, painted by Sir James Thornhill, with his head in the centre...' at Thornhill House, but does not go into any further detail about other elements of the design.

It is, however, relevant to note that in the text of his book, Metz describes his engraving as 'Wisdom rewarding Genius is painted in a ceiling at Greenwich'. Furthermore, in Decorative Painting in England, 1537-1837, vol. 1 (1962), Edward Croft-Murray draws attention to ceilings at Gosfield Hall, Essex and Headley Park, Hampshire, both of which were painted by Thornhill with the subject of Minerva, and he states that the composition at Gosfield Hall is near to that of the Tassaert drawing.

This drawing is a design for the corners of a painted ceiling, possibly the drawing room at Thornhill House, Dorset. Thornhill has annotated the drawing with descriptions of the iconography in each corner of the sheet. The completed ceiling has since been destroyed but an engraving by C.M. Metz (E.1175-1886) illustrates the final design. The four corner designs are almost identical but the engraving has the addition of a framed central medallion in which Minerva is seen crowning a portrait of Thornhill.

Thornhill purchased land in Dorset on which he built a house in the 1730s. He is known to have painted the ceiling of the drawing room with 'his head in the centre', indicating that this drawing was a preliminary study for the design later captured in full by Metz. Thornhill drew the initial design in red chalk, emphasising the details with pen and ink,

D.45-1891