Ramsay Richard Reinagle, 'Mountainous Landscape with Ruins and Buildings', 1796

In the early 1960s a group of oil sketches was sold from a collection in Yorkshire, including this work. Although it is agreed that the artist is British, it is not clear who painted this sketch. It has been attributed to the British artist and museum administrator Sir Charles Locke Eastlake. Eastlake travelled to Italy in 1816 and stayed there, mainly in Rome, until 1830.

Eastlake threw himself into drawing and painting from nature. He often worked under bright sun, without an umbrella or hat. He was nicknamed the Salamander. Eastlake was forced to stop painting out of doors when his eyesight became affected by the intense light. Luckily, this did not last long. He eventually became the first Director of the National Gallery.

However, the attribution to Eastlake has been contested. Open-air oil sketches, swiftly produced to capture rapidly changing natural effects, encouraged experimental and adventurous approaches to painting. This led to some remarkable works, but has also meant that attributions can be problematic. Such sketches were often only intended to be used by artists once they returned to their studios, as part of the process of creating larger, more worked-up oil paintings. Therefore, few sketches are signed or dated and sometimes the locations are not known.

The horizontal nature of this sketch, as well as the technique, has led to a reappraisal of the work’s attribution. There may also be a connection to a panorama painting. Panoramas were popular visual entertainments. They offered the public immersive art experiences usually linked to landscapes or historical events. Ramsay Richard Reinagle was one of the leading panorama artists of the early nineteenth century.

Reinagle was trained by his father, Philip Reinagle, a successful landscape and animal painter. Reinagle visited Rome in 1796. On his return to London he entered into a partnership with Thomas Barker, whose father had coined the word panorama. In 1803 Reinagle exhibited a panorama of a view of Rome seen from the Capitol. He was a very talented artist. He was only 13 when his works were first exhibited at the Royal Academy. However, his career shows how difficult it was for artists to make a living from producing paintings alone. As well as working on panoramas, he copied old master paintings and was involved with the restoration of artworks. Despite this, by the end of his life he had fallen into poverty and survived on a pension from the Academy.

It is not possible to identify this scene. Farm buildings and ruins stretch across the work. The plain reaches to purple mountains that climb up to a bright blue sky with only wisps of clouds. The scene is quiet and calm with no narrative content. It is hard to know how this sketch might have been used in a panorama. It may instead have been an exercise in depicting grand sweeping views.