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The painting was acquired by the Tate , in memory of the distinguished Constable scholar Leslie Parris, with generous contributions from the National Art Collections Fund, the Heritage Lottery Fund,...

This exceptional late Turner watercolour (recently exhibited at both the National Gallery, London and the National Gallery of Art, Washington) with its striking sunset is clearly a record of a...

This beautiful portrait of George William Campbell, 6th Duke of Argyll is one of Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s greatest pastels. The drawing was made in Rome in 1788 when the sitter...

‘remarkable even among Lewises for the brilliancy of its lights contrasting with the clear depths of its shadows; it is, too, softer than most Lewises.’

In the late 1860s, Gérôme painted a small group of remarkable pictures showing Napoleon during the Egyptian campaign of 1798-9, which are among his most compelling images. He was to...

This painting of two women lying asleep on a mountain hillside almost certainly depicts Sargent’s sister, Violet, and her daughter, Reine. The watercolour was very likely painted at the Simplon...

Unlike Turner's late views of Switzerland, he made no views of Venice that he would have regarded as finished works. As a result the majority of the some 150 watercolours...

According to Patrick Noon’s 2008 catalogue raisonné, the present watercolour, made in the year before the artist’s death, is the last surviving pure marine watercolour which Bonington painted. Pure, in...

This beautiful work has only recently returned to view, having been in a private collection for many years. It is one of the finest of Turner's Picturesque Views on the...

This landscape, painted two or three years before his death in 1788, demonstrates the power, beauty and monumentality of Gainsborough’s last pictures. It was in these years, as Reynolds eventually...

Thomas Gainsborough is regarded as one of the most extraordinary draughtsman of the eighteenth-century and this sheet is considered to be one of his greatest achievements. The subject of this...

This exceptional watercolour by Girtin depicts Jedburgh Abbey as seen from the southeast. The parish church remains visible in the five westernmost bays of the ruined nave and a spire...

Charles Rhyne suggests that this painting may be a study from nature showing the influence of Jacob van Ruisdael, whose work Constable was studying in about 1800-01. During this period,...

“Goddess (he cry’d) these glorious arms that shine With matchless art, confess the hand divine. Now to the bloody battle let me bend : But ah! the relicks of my...

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n Without a doubt one of the greatest Lawrence drawings still left in private hands. The work is part...

This remarkable red chalk drawing of Maria Zambaco, which has been in a private collection for the last 40 years, was drawn by Burne-Jones in 1868. Previously misidentified as Augusta...

Among Sir Peter Lely’s most beautiful and rarest works are his highly finished, signed portrait drawings, which he made as independent works of art. Shortly after his death in 1680,...

In his lifelong exploration of idealised landscape in painting, drawing and printmaking, Gainsborough constantly returned to an established repertoire of motifs inspired by what he perceived as the enviable simplicities...

John Constable rarely drew or painted oak trees. He seems to have preferred ash, elm, willow and poplar. The rare individuality of Constable's greatest pencil drawings convey through tone and...

This remarkably spontaneous depiction of the sun appearing through clouds at dawn originally came from a page in a half-filled sketchbook which was given by Turner to his friend and...

This quickly executed depiction of the sun appearing through clouds at dawn originally came from a page in a half-filled sketchbook, known as the Farnley-Munro sketchbook, which was given by...

Born in Russia to an English father, then educated in England, Cozens traveled to Italy to study with Claude-Joseph Vernet. Back in London by 1748, Cozens became an influential drawing...

Following the death of his beloved son Thomas More Palmer in 1861, Samuel Palmer's retreat to the suburban gentility of Furze Hill House, Redhill ('in the midst of what is...

This newly-discovered self portrait drawing shows Keene as a young man wearing a fez which he used to wear in his studio. There is a well-known oil sketch of Keene...

Beale’s red chalk drawings are amongst the most spontaneous and powerful drawings produced in England in the seventeenth century. They are particularly unusual in their lack of formality. This drawing...

This drawing of Perseus in armour is a preparatory study for 'Atlas turned to Stone' (1878) from 'The Perseus Series', (Series I in the Stattsgalerie, Stuttgart; Series II in the...

This watercolour, formerly identified as The Old Castle, Heidelberg, has recently been re-identified by Ian Warrell as Dover Castle. Careful analysis by Peter Bower has demonstrated that this sheet comes...

The drawing was produced on a commission from Sir Walter Scott in 1818 for The Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, a suite of engravings after drawings by Turner and other artists...

Of indisputable importance, this self-portrait was drawn by the artist on Christmas Eve 1796, at the age of sixty-three. This is the most complete and finished of Zoffany's self portraits...

The draft of a letter, probably intended for William Roscoe, on the reverse of the drawing reads: 'It is proper I should likewise mention the honour Mr/Rathbone Did me in...

This important vignette by Turner was painted circa 1822 in connection with Walter Scott’s celebrated narrative poem ‘The Lady of the Lake’, first published in 1810. It concerns the struggle...

Wonderfully evoking the character of this particular broad stretch of the river, according to the expert Cecilia Powell on Turner’s paintings in Germany and described as ‘by far the finest’...

Previously recorded as being untraced this important oil-sketch was rediscovered in 2010. It represents a poignantly felt recording of the artist's birthplace and his late father's home. It is a...

John Constable is one of the most celebrated and influential of all English romantic artists, and his most famous paintings are among the best-loved images in British Art. Painted in...

This remarkably vivid and spontaneous oil sketch relates to the evolution of one of John Constable’s important early Royal Academy exhibits, Landscape: boys fishing, 1813 (Anglesey Abbey, National Trust; shown...

The wonderful palingenesis of nature and existence after a downpour, its return heralded by a bow of coloured light, bestowing new hope upon a rueful sky; radiantly hung as an...

Weymouth was one of many towns along the southern coast that benefited from the growing belief in the medical advantages of sea bathing, and, following George III's visit in 1789,...

Like a number of fellow artists during the 1790s – a period when travel on the Continent was virtually impossible owing to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars – Turner...

This view is taken at dusk looking west with the sun still bathing the distant mountains, the moon rising out of the clouds. The steep cliffs dropping in to the...

This watercolour depicts Sabrina, Milton’s ‘gentle Nymph… that with moist curb sways away the smooth Severn stream’ (Comus II, lines 824-826). As described in the quotation under which the picture...

This large drawing is related to the oil painting of Sir Francis Burdett (measuring 98 ½ x 56 ½ in.) now in the National Portrait Gallery and is one of...

In the summer of 1760, Gainsborough took a lease on a handsome and well-placed house in the heart of the city of Bath, yards from the Abbey and the Pump...

The present drawing once formed part of an album that was rediscovered in the 1940s and was the subject of an exhibition held in 1949 at the London galleries of...

This large watercolour of an Asian Openbill Stork is from the great natural history series painted for Sir Elijah and Lady Impey during the years 1777 to 1783, which is...

This painting shows the artist's eldest daughter Maria Louise. Within the family she was affectionally known as Minna. The composition was engraved in mezzotint by David Lucas for the second...

A number of drawings bear a gold stamp of the artist’s initials or his full name and it has been assumed that he considered these sheets as finished works of...

William Young Ottley entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1787 under the tutelage of John Brown (1749-1787), whose studio contents, including 219 drawings, he purchased on Brown's death. From 1791-99...

This unusually fresh and complete watercolour shows Whitehall with part of the Banqueting House designed by Inigo Jones. Although Sandby painted views in and around London such as those of...

The present watercolour can be identified with the one previously recorded by Alexander Joseph Finberg (1866-1939) and referred to in Wilton’s catalogue (see Literature, Wilton, p. 311), but which has...

This remarkable, spiritedly worked, sky study dating from the early 1830s is an important recent rediscovery. The dark plateaued tree line which runs along the bottom of the sheet was...

These drawings make up two of the five drawings of the Senses 'which Mr. West made for the Princess Royal , to make an Etching from'. Another from the series,...

In this exquisite drawing, Bonington delicately depicts the Punta della Dogana, which is the eastern tip of the sestiere (literally a 'sixth' of the city) of Dorsoduro where the Grand...

This free and spontaneous oil sketch of a young boy is of Mary Beale’s eldest son Bartholomew, who was baptised in 1656. The sketch relates very closely to two other...

Henry Robert Morland was born in London in 1716. By the time he had reached artistic maturity he had earned a name for himself as being 'a maker of most...

Harmoniously coloured and elegantly composed, Susanna Leigh ranks among the most compelling female portraits of Wright’s early maturity. The sitter, the daughter of Edward Trafford, Mayor of Liverpool, married John...

Constable's fame as a landscape painter has inevitably overshadowed his lifelong interest in the human figure. The copying of casts, the study of anatomy and eventually drawing and painting from...

Anton Raphael Mengs’s father Ismael (1688-1764), a somewhat obscure portrait painter employed in the Dresden court, was resolved to make his children into artists of world renown. Described as “a...

This important work dates from 1775 and is closest in style, technique, medium and conception to Gardner's Three Witches from Macbeth, 1775 allocated to the National Portrait Gallery in 2010...

Reputedly Gainsborough never sold a drawing and, if this is true, the group of pastel portraits the artist produced in the 1760s raise many questions about patronage and purpose. There...

There are very few pastel portraits by Gainsborough and the oval of Duchess Gertrude is amongst the most vivacious. It is in exceptional condition and shows Gainsborough’s confidence in minimising...

Lespinasse, whose precision and finesse as a topographical draftsman are unmatched in the eighteenth century, executed highly finished watercolors representing the important architectural sights of the day. He produced this...

During the 1830s, Roberts traveled in Europe and the Near East, seeking out exotic locations and subjects. He was one of the first British artists to go to Spain (1832-33),...

The countryside surrounding the Lakes of Albano and Nemi in the Alban Hills, south-east of Rome, was a favourite area for artists attracted by the spectacular scenery and by its...

Jan Siberechts has long been regarded as one of the founders of English landscape painting. Six pictures made between 1682 – 1697 by the artist have become known as the...

The composition, with a prominent ruined building on the hillside and the distance closed by mountains, is unique in Gainsborough's early work, and is evidently inspired by such Berchems as...

In this airy watercolour the twenty-one-year-old Turner takes up a theme that was to preoccupy him all his life: the River Thames. In 1790 at the age of fifteen he...

This superb ‘colour beginning’ depicts a bridge with its surrounding countryside in the early morning as the low-lying mist begins to dissipate. Turner’s ability to catch the mood and essence...

This watercolour of Margate is surprisingly little known despite the significance of its viewpoint and its fascinating and distinguished history, which links it with the early years of the Metropolitan...

This watercolour was made circa 1821 and depicts the estuary of the Somme at high tide.

This on-the-spot watercolour which has only recently surfaced, shows Windsor Forest, the great expanse (5000 acres) of parkland that surrounds the castle. This remarkably sensitive watercolour calls to mind the...

This recently rediscovered watercolour vignette is from the series of forty illustrations Turner made to illustrate Sir Walter Scotts; Miscellaneous Prose, issued in twenty-eight volumes between 1834 and 1836. He...

This watercolour, which once belonged to Ruskin, Turner's greatest champion, has only recently re-emerged. It is one of a series of watercolours commissioned from the artist c.1830 by John Murray...

Turner was commissioned to illustrate editions of many of the great authors ­- Byron and Scott above all - as well as others whose contemporary fame is now forgotten. Of...

The present watercolour of Norham Castle was one of a series of six illustrations which were commissioned by Turner's Yorkshire patron, Walter Fawkes, in around 1822. This series was designed...

Isabey made plein-air sketches early in his career, but this dramatic scene, composed as if witnessed from the edge of the surf, was probably painted in his studio. Perhaps dating...

John Martin became one of the most popular British artists of the early 19th century, producing ‘sublime’ scenes of Biblical catastrophe and apocalypse which provoked and challenged fellow artists, writers,...

The artist suspends us above a ledge half way up a steep mountainside (rising up and out of the picture), allowing us to gaze upon a vast, misty valley enlivened...

This drawing dates from the mid 1780s and shows the experimentations in technique which are typical of Gainsborough’s later drawings. Here he depends upon the texture of the surface of...

John Petherick (1788–1861) lived and worked in South Wales during the first half of the 19th Century. He was brought up near the Pen-y- Darren ironworks in Merthyr Tydfi. There...

Beckett dates the present painting to c. 1646 when the sitter would have been aged twenty-eight. Philip, 3rd Earl of Leicester succeeded Robert, the 2nd Earl of Salisbury. He was...

Willielma, Viscountess Glenorchy (1741-1786), was the daughter of William Maxwell (died 1741), a medical practitioner in Kirkcudbright, and his wife, Elizabeth Hairstanes (died circa 1806) of Craig. At the age...

Roberts returned to England from his extensive and arduous tour of Egypt, Palestine and Syria in July 1839 with his collection of 272 watercolour sketches, ‘one of the richest folios...

This painting is in remarkable condition having been kept behind glass since Lear painted it. The picture was commissioned by Lady Ashburton , one of Lear’s patrons and it has...

Lespinasse, whose precision and finesse as a topographical draftsman are unmatched in the eighteenth century, executed highly finished watercolours representing the important architectural sights of the day. He produced this...

A painter, draftsman, and writer, Edward Lear is well known for the superb topographical landscapes he executed over the course of a lifetime of travel throughout Europe, the Near East,...

Francis Towne’s distinctive style began to evolve in the 1770s, but it was not until his visit to Italy in 1780-1 – when he was already forty – that it...

Martin produced many works in sepia or grey wash in his early career. This corresponds closely with the finished oil of 1812 (shown at the RA in 1813, no. 211)....

Thomas Daniell and his nephew were undoubtedly the most important European landscape artists working in India towards the end of the eighteenth century, and created a vogue in England for...

This work is from the celebrated series of watercolours painted for the brothers William and James Fraser in India from 1815 onwards. The paintings of the Fraser Album are acknowledged...

In July 1842, while he was still a student at the Royal Academy Schools, Richard Dadd left England to accompany Sir Thomas Phillips on a ten month tour through Europe...

This radiant view of Jerusalem, bathed in warm light from the western sun, has been protected in an album for most if not all of its existence and has thus...

The emergence of a hitherto unrecorded early work by Thomas Girtin, in perfect condition and with its original signed mount, adds significantly to our understanding of the precocious development of...

Thomas Hearne, along with Paul Sandby, was one of the great topographical artists working in England at the end of the 18th century. Hearne began his artistic training under the...

Beccles lies just inside the county of Suffolk, near the Norfolk border. The river from which the view of St Michael’s Church is taken is the Waveney. Cotman was commissioned...

This watercolour was painted around 1854. Cox had visited Rhyl in the August of that year and produced a number of sketches there. He painted an oil, signed and dated...

This elaborate sepia watercolour by John Martin appears to illustrate the story of Adonis who was wounded by a wild boar whilst out hunting and bled to death in the...

This sheet came to light in an album of around fifty hitherto unknown drawings by Fuseli, covering most of his career and including a wide range of subjects, assembled by...

Jean-Guillaume Moitte was born in Paris to an artist father, Pierre-Etienne Moitte, who was an Academician and professional engraver. From 1761 to 1764 he trained under the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle...

James Dunthorne junior is best remembered for his drawings of fashionable parties which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 1780s and also for his work with Thomas Rowlandson....

This work is from the celebrated series of watercolours painted for the brothers William and James Fraser in India from 1815 onwards. The paintings of the Fraser Album are acknowledged...

John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, composed c.1650-60 and first published in 1667, was a work concerned with rebellion, and Milton himself had been a republican, writing at a time...

This is one of a group of toilette scenes by Rossetti dating to the 1860s and demonstrating the influence of Titian's 'Woman with a Mirror'. Beginning in 1859 with 'Bocca...

Fanny Cornforth (1826-1906), whose real name was Sarah Cox, entered Rossetti's life in the late 1850s. She herself, in one of two contradictory accounts, dated their meeting to 1856 during...

This powerful single figure by Burne-Jones is a study, with minor differences, for Cupid in The Car of Love at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The triumphal procession of Love...

Isabey’s work, particularly in oil-sketches such as this and in watercolour, shows the profound influence of British Romantic landscape painters – particularly that of Bonington and Constable – on a...

Lewin sailed to Tahiti aboard the Norfolk in November 1801: his intention was to collect insects and, he hoped, to find gold, while the rest of the party was there...

Lewin sailed to Tahiti aboard the Norfolk in November 1801: his intention was to collect insects and, he hoped, to find gold, while the rest of the party was there...

This exuberant painting, overflowing with fecundity and energy, visually describes the atmosphere and activities of the rainy months of Sravana (July-August) and Bhadon (August-September), both of which are named in...

This painting is from an important series known as the 'Large Basohli Bhagavata Purana' or the 'Fifth Basohli Bhagavata Purana' series. Finely executed and in remarkably good condition, it is...

In the Austrian Tyrol was painted in Southern Tyrol at Kolfuschg (modern day Colfosco), then situated in Austria, at the very beginning of the First World War. The...

Capturing a warm and soft naturalistic light, which stands out from that of her classical counterparts Augustus John and Charles Sims, Knight’s watercolour has a freshness of palette and atmosphere....