Watercolor with pen and gray ink over graphite on moderately thick, moderately textured, cream laid paper
Dimensions:
Mount: 10 1/4 × 23 1/2 inches (26 × 59.7 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Inscribed in black ink, on back, lower center: "Harbledown Hospital"; in black ink, on mount, now detached: "Harbledown, A village near Canterbury | J: Skelton 1757 | N: B: Drawn immediatly after a heavy Summer-Shower"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1975.4.1956
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
landscape | fences | road | town | village | buildings | church | hospital | houses | trees
Associated Places:
United Kingdom | England | Kent | Harbledown | Hospital of St. Nicholas Harbledown
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29)An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Royal Academy of Arts, 2007-10-20 - 2008-01-27)Paul Mellon's Legacy : A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29)The Line of Beauty : British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century (Yale Center for British Art, 2001-05-19 - 2001-08-05)British Watercolors - Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries from the Yale Center for British Art (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1985-04 - 1986-08)British Watercolors - Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries from the Yale Center for British Art (Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester, 1985-04 - 1986-08)British Watercolors - Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries from the Yale Center for British Art (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1985-04 - 1986-08)British Watercolors - Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries from the Yale Center for British Art (Portland Art Museum, 1985-04 - 1986-08)British Watercolors - Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries from the Yale Center for British Art (Toledo Museum of Art, 1985-04 - 1986-08)British Watercolors - Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries from the Yale Center for British Art (Block Museum of Art, 1985-04 - 1986-08)British Watercolors - Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries from the Yale Center for British Art (Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, 1985-04 - 1986-08)
Publications:
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British watercolour drawings in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Victoria, BC, 1971, p. 17, no. 38, ND1928 .A76 1971 (LC) (YCBA)John Baskett, English drawings and watercolors, 1550-1850, in the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon , The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 1972, p. 31, no. 43, NC228 B37+ (YCBA)John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, pp. 260-261, no. 42, pl. 42, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 2, no. 62, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)S. Rowland Pierce, Jonathan Skelton and his water colours : a check list, Volume of the Walpole Society, vol. 36, 1960, p. 16, no. 28, N12 .W35 A1 (LC)+ Oversize (YCBA) Also available online via JSTOR.Sotheby's sale catalogue : Fine eighteenth and nineteenth century drawings and paintings : 13 July 1966, Sotheby's, July 13, 1966, p. 5, lot 10, Auction Catalogues (YCBA)Scott Wilcox, British watercolors : drawings of the 18th and 19th centuries from the Yale Center for British Art, , Hudson Hill Press, New York, 1985, no. 2, pl. 2, ND1928 W533 1985 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Apart from a handful of atmospherically sensitive topographical views in the south of England, little is known of Jonathan Skelton before he embarked in 1757 for Italy, where he died two years later. Earlier in 1757 he produced a set of eight views of Canterbury and its environs, to which this drawing of the village of Harbledown belongs. Skelton’s topographical drawings reveal the sort of naturalistic concerns that would come more and more to the forefront of British landscape art as the century progressed. In his view of the leper’s hospital at Harbledown, Skelton seems more involved with the trees and old fences and tumbledown outbuildings than with the hospital itself, which can just be glimpsed through the trees. When he mounted the drawing, Skelton added a note that it had been made after a summer shower—the sort of meteorological notation the Romantic landscape painter John Constable would make some sixty or seventy years later. Gallery label for Paul Mellon's Legacy: A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29)