George Lambert

Essay:

Lambert was a landscape painter working in the true classical tradition of Wootton and Gaspard Poussin. Indeed, the first recorded references to him date to 1722 when he was working with John Wootton, his master. We know that from 1726 until his death he was employed as a Scenographer, both at Covent Garden and at the St. James' Theatre and that he was also a founder member of the Beefsteak Club.

In 1730 he was associated with William Hogarth and Samuel Scott, both of whom painted figures and water in some of his landscape compositions. A fine example of this collaboration, entitled 'Views of Westcombe House' can be found at Wilton House (Earl of Pembroke Collection). Lambert also painted the landscape in Hogarth's big paintings for St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1735 and 1736. He was the first chairman of the Society of Artists in 1761 and was elected its first President shortly before his death.

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This composition borrows various motifs employed by Gaspard Dughet, most notably the architectural structures viewed across the lake at right, taken from a work in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. 335). The drover and flock of sheep in the foreground derive from another Dughet, formerly in the collection of Sir Robert Walpole at Houghton Hall, from where it was acquired directly by the Hermitage, St. Petersburg in 1779 (inv. no. 1248). That work was engraved in reverse by F. Vivares in 1741, the year before the present work is dated.

Lambert repeated the present composition in a pastel, also signed and dated 1742 (location unknown; see Einberg, op. cit., no. P1742A).

Provenance:

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928-1985), Silverdale, Lancashire, by 1959.
The Hon. Christopher Lennox-Boyd (1941-2012), 1963.
Anon. sale; Christie's, London, 18 Nov. 1988, lot 57.
with Rafael Valls, London, July 1989.
Art Market, New York.
with Anthony Mould, London;
Private collection, UK, acquired from the above.

Literature:

A. French, Gaspard Dughet, called Gaspar Poussin 1615-75: A French landscape painter in seventeenth century Rome and his influence on British art, exh. cat., London, 1980, p. 83, under no. 59.
M.-L. Schnackenburg, Der englische Landschaftsmaler George Lambert, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Göttingen, 1992, pp. 47, 82-83, no. 12.
E. Einberg, 'Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of George Lambert', The Walpole Society, LXIII, 2001, pp. 145-146, no. P1742, fig. 60.