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Indian landscape with people drawing water from a spring (recto)

Maker

(artist)
1733-1810

Title

Date of Production

1788

Medium

black, white and red chalk with stumping (recto), black and white chalk (verso), on blue laid paper, inlaid into a mount with brown ink and pink wash framing lines

Dimensions

Height: 26.5 cm
Width: 34.8 cm

Accession Number

D.1957.WF.4655

Mode of Acquisition

Witt Fund, purchase, 1957 (March)

Credit

The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

Copyright

Work in the public domain

Location

Not currently on display

Keywords

Label Text

This drawing is one of about a dozen that survive from the last of several trips Zoffany made to India. Primarily a portraitist, he seems to have sketched these scenes of local architecture, landscape and daily life for his own pleasure. The three figures in the foreground drawing water, the ostensible subject of the scene, are completely overshadowed by the eerie woodland, in which one of the trees appears to be creeping forward over a rock.

Notes

On the verso, three of the heads appear to be of Azoff-ud-Dowlah, Nabob of Oudh, of whom Zoffany made a number of drawings and paintings.

Provenance

probably the artist's estate sale, Robins (London), 9 May 1811 among lots 14-39 (unaware of any annotated catalogues); Brigadier Hutchinson; by descent to Major R.G. Hutchinson; purchased from him by Colnaghi (London), 1 March 1955; purchased there by The Courtauld Institute via the Witt Fund, 22 March 1957

Exhibition History

Drawings Gallery Display - Regarding Trees, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 18/06/2016-25/09/2016

Zoffany: painter of the Georgian scene, National Portrait Gallery, London, 14/01/1977-27/03/1977

English Landscape Drawings from the Witt Collection, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 01/01/1965-01/05/1965

Literature

English Landscape Drawings from the Witt Collection, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London, 1965
cat. no. 10

Webster, Mary, Johann Zoffany, 1733-1810, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011
ill. on p. 546, fig. 412 (recto), fig. 413 (verso)

Inscriptions

Watermark: Watermarks: none in the drawing sheet. Mount border (historic), Recto: lower right corner: “WHATMAN”.

Inscription: none.

Collector's mark: none.

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