Watercolor and gouache over graphite on buff wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 14 5/16 x 16 9/16 inches (36.4 x 42.1 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.4910
Gallery Label:
In their teens John Frederick Lewis and his neighbor Edwin Landseer would visit the famous menagerie on the Strand in London to sketch the animals. Landseer would become the greatest of Victorian animal painters. This early study, probably a result of those visits to the menagerie with Landseer, shows Lewis’s own virtuosity in that line. It was these early animal studies that brought Lewis to the attention of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who hired Lewis to paint animals and landscapes into the backgrounds of his portraits. Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)
