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Lot Essay
In 1846 Francis Danby exhibited at the Royal Academy Sunrise - the Fisherman's Home (no. 475). A notice about that painting, accompanied by an engraving of it by Arthur Willmore, appeared in the Art Journal in 1852. The exhibited painting, which, according to the Art Journal, was based on a scene in Norway, was given to the National Gallery in 1847, transferred to the Tate and destroyed in World War II.
This painting is almost certainly the smaller version of the Fisherman's Home that Danby painted in 1858 for Benjamin Gibbons, the brother of his most important patron John Gibbons. After the death of John Gibbons in 1851, Benjamin took up Danby's cause and kept up a correspondence with him. Some of Danby's most revealing comments about his life-long aspirations as an artist are contained in his letters to Benjamin Gibbons. He wrote, for example, in 1858 (the year this painting was executed) that 'the class of pictures which I have had the ambition and desire to paint (being 'poetical') always require a deep and rich tone of colour and effect, and such are not well adapted for public exhibition'. Judging from the engraving of the lost Fisherman's Home, the present painting closely follows the lines of the original composition, however it is far from a mindless repetition. It fills the gap left by the destruction of the 1846 picture and embodies the 'poetry' that so profoundly impressed Danby's contemporaries.
This painting is almost certainly the smaller version of the Fisherman's Home that Danby painted in 1858 for Benjamin Gibbons, the brother of his most important patron John Gibbons. After the death of John Gibbons in 1851, Benjamin took up Danby's cause and kept up a correspondence with him. Some of Danby's most revealing comments about his life-long aspirations as an artist are contained in his letters to Benjamin Gibbons. He wrote, for example, in 1858 (the year this painting was executed) that 'the class of pictures which I have had the ambition and desire to paint (being 'poetical') always require a deep and rich tone of colour and effect, and such are not well adapted for public exhibition'. Judging from the engraving of the lost Fisherman's Home, the present painting closely follows the lines of the original composition, however it is far from a mindless repetition. It fills the gap left by the destruction of the 1846 picture and embodies the 'poetry' that so profoundly impressed Danby's contemporaries.