Artist: Charles Landseer (English, 1799 – 1879)
Title: Clarissa Harlowe in the Prison Room of the Sheriff’s Office
Medium: Antique engraving on wove paper after the original oil paint on canvas by master engraver George Austen Periam (British, 1801–1858).
Dimensions: Image size 7 3/4 x 9 5/8 inches.
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 17 x 19 inches.
Framing: This piece has been professionally matted and framed using all new materials.
Samuel Richardson’s novel ‘The History of Clarissa Harlowe’ was first published in 1747-8. Clarissa, the heroine, is a woman of great integrity. She is wooed by the rake Robert Lovelace. He wants her to live with him out of wedlock and despite her resistance to the proposal, rapes her. Clarissa’s continuing denial of him after this transforms her into a tragic heroine who dominates the last scenes of the book. At one point she is imprisoned for debt. Landseer depicts that moment when she is discovered in gaol by Lovelace’s friend John Belford. Landseer’s choice of subject and his handling of it recalls William Hogarth’s much earlier ‘modern moral subjects’, which influenced many nineteenth-century genre painters.
Charles Landseer was an English painter, mostly of historical subjects. He was born in London on 12 August 1799, the second son of the engraver John Landseer, and the elder brother of the animal painter, Sir Edwin Landseer. He trained under his father, and the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon. He was awarded the silver palette of the Royal Society of Arts for a drawing of Laocoon in 1815, and in 1816 he entered the Royal Academy Schools where he was taught by Henry Fuseli. In 1823 he accompanied Sir Charles Stuart de Rothesay on a diplomatic mission to Portugal and Brazil. Many of the drawings he made on the journey were shown at the British Institution in 1828. He became an associate in of the Royal Academy in 1837, and a full academician in 1845. In 1851, he was appointed Keeper of the Royal Academy, a post requiring him to teach in the “Antique School”. He remained in the position until 1873. Most of his pictures were of subjects from British history, or from literature. He paid close attention to the historical accuracy of the accessories and details in his paintings. His works included The Meeting of Charles I. and his Adherents before the Battle of Edgehill, Clarissa Harlowe in the Prison Room of the Sheriff’s Office, The Pillaging of a Jew’s House in the Reign of Richard I, and The Temptation of Andrew Marvel (1841). While under Haydon’s instruction he also made a series of detailed anatomical drawings. He died in London on 22 July 1879, leaving 10,000 guineas to the Royal Academy to fund scholarships.