Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from David Wilkie, Madrid, to Lady Beaumont, 1828 January 10 : autograph manuscript signed.

BIB_ID
414778
Accession number
MA 1581.226
Creator
Wilkie, David, Sir, 1785-1841.
Display Date
Madrid, Spain, 1828 January 10.
Credit line
Purchased from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1959.
Description
1 item (5 pages, with address) ; 22.5 x 18.0 cm
Notes
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall and to other members of the Beaumont family. See collection-level record for more information (MA 1581.1-297).
This letter formerly identified as MA 1581 (Wilkie) 33.
Address panel with postmarks and seal to "Lady Beaumont / Coleorton Hall / Ashby de la Zouch." The letter was originally addressed to Lady Beaumont at Grosvenor Square / London but that has been crossed through and it was re-addressed to Coleorton Hall.
Provenance
Purchased as a gift of the Fellows from Benjamin Ifor Evans, 1954.
Summary
Writing to her in the absence of her husband to describe what he has seen in Spain; saying "The desire of finding some new object of pursuit to relieve the tedium of a third winter exile from home has suggested this journey into Spain;" saying "In England we confessedly know little of the arts in Spain, all that was now before we had the interest of a new discovery and in the superb Museum of the Prado my first request was to see the two large Rooms filled with the works of the Spanish School. There I found names of high repute scarcely known out of Spain....But what has given me the greatest variety of material for reflection is a visit I soon after made to the Convent of the Escurial [sic]...This Convent of St. Lorenzo is said to be the richest endowment in the catholic domains. It is placed on a rocky desert on the verge of the Guadaramas within sight of Madrid, has a most imposing aspect scarcely less extensive than if St. Pauls Church and Hampton Court were united. One could not approach it but with awe and respect - under its gorgeous Tribune rests the ashes of Charles the Fifth, while in a neglected passage room what is not less interesting to an artist is the famous Apotheosis of that Monarch by Titian...In this vast building a small corner is alotted to the visits of the Royal Family who while I was there were present and had brought into the sacred solitude all the military retainers of a Court. Perhaps the circumstances of the monastic life were the more striking from this accompaniment, the quiet abstinence of the Convent contrasted with the noisy riot of the cazern. The Pious Queen of Spain was also here during the absence of the King who was gone to quiet the disaffected in the South. She looked like an anxious person, was daily seen in the Basilica at Mass and at Vespers, in all places & at all hours 'oftimes on her knees than on her feet' as if to propitiate a happy termination to the disorder of the distracted country. During my stay of seven days in the Escorial the habits of its inmates and the intricacies of the extensive building became as familiar to me as the Pictures;" relating the specific works of art he has seen adding "They have however all an interest from their unusual state of preservation. Some unfinished, unglazed, unvarnished. As Titian left them so they have remained no other than accidental damage has ever been allowed to approach them - no rubbing no retouching, the well known disposition of Catholics to keep things as they are being the best of all preservative of Pictures...But if I could now divine what Sir George Beaumont in accordance with his feeling for British art would have admired the most, in Spain and what your Ladyship would have fully participated in it would be the works here of Velásquez and I might add some of Murillo. Velásquez is the Painter that every British artist must in his heart admire. His art is the essence of Painting as opposed to sculpture, gives objects not as they are but as they appear - The aim of British art as distinguished from the art that prevails now all over the Continent. Nothing can be more lively than the effect this principle gives rise to on the canvas of Velásquez...I have remarked how much our English style is Velasquez. This is not from [illegible] his Portraits than in his Landscapes. The style of Gainsborough is here anticipated and Sir George Beaumont had he seen them would have recognized much of his own manly and elegant style in the feeling, touch & Energetic breadth of effect of the Landscapes of Velásquez. Murillo has not the talent nor the boldness of Velásquez but simple natural and amiable he wins all hearts with a style inferior to his subjects. He had yet a colour of a high order which excepting Rembrandt was above that of all his contemporaries;" asking her to excuse the length of his letter and "...excuse so many details;" adding, in a postscript on a separate page and dated January 22, 1828, his request for her to remember him to Sir George & Lady Beaumont.