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Tuesday 11th October
222 PIETER LODEWIJK FRANCISCO KLUYVER (1816- 1900)An Extensive Dutch Landscape with Figures
Oil on board, 35 x 48cm
Signed
€ 6,000 - 8,000
222A HERBERT PUGH (FL. C. 1758-1788)Cows, Sheep and Goats in a Landscape
Oil on canvas, 39 x 47.5cm
Signed and dated 1762
Born in Ireland, Pugh moved to London, settling in
Covent Garden. He exhibited at the Society of Artists
between 1760 and 1776 where his work was admired
by no less than the great connoisseur Horace Walpole.
He painted low-life, caricatured genre subjects rather
in the manner of Hogarth and also landscapes
seemingly influenced by the later period of George
Barret, although the influence of Richard Wilson, his
neighbour in Covent Garden has also been detected
in his work. Pugh’s landscapes were praised by
Colonel Grant, the great chronicler of the subject,
who described him as ‘very nearly a great artist’.
Within the landscape tradition, Pugh specialized in
the genre popularized by Dutch artists such as Aelbert
Cuyp who was enormously popular in England and of the
forty-five works he exhibited at the Society of Artists about a quarter were landscapes with cattle (Nicola Figgis and Brendan Rooney,
Irish
Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland
Vol. 1, 2001, p. 395). Clearly within this tradition, the present work, signed and dated 1762, is closely
related to an example in the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI 1819) dated three years earlier which shows similarly, anthropomorphized cattle,
here joined in a forest glade by sheep, goats and sparing bulls. In the background is a pyramid-shaped funerary monument. Pugh’s work is
extremely rare and this is a fine example. The canvas is painted with great brio and enthusiasm, and an element of quirky humour – found in
his Hogarthian caricatures – should not be denied this gathering of the species. According to Strickland, Pugh’s ‘intemperate habits hastened his
death’ which occurred some time after 1788.
€1,000 – 1,500