Study for 'Lord Ponsonby's horses held by Grooms at Stamboul' Dated 1841

Black chalk, watercolour and bodycolour on buff paper

Provenance: J.F Lewis Studio Sale, Christies, 1909

Property of a Lady

Sotheby Parke Bernet 1980

Private Collection

This exquisite little study by Britain's most accomplished Orientalist is a
study for Lewis' lost masterpiece - 'Arab Horses and their Seises,
Constantinople' - that was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1870 but
subsequently disappeared. The sketch is an exciting rediscovery in itself,
having been unseen at auction for many years and was only rediscovered and
acquired at a provincial auction, where it was catalogued merely as ' a 19th
C School watercolour'.

The study dates from 1841 and depicts a pair of horses and their liveried
grooms in the employ of Lord Ponsonby, Britain's then ambassador to
Constantinople. It dates from the most interesting and fruitful portion of
Lewis' career, when he had just begun a process of immersion in the culture
of the Middle East that eventually resulted in him disappearing without
trace for a decade in Egypt. This work is of particular interest not just
because of the fascinating glimpse it offers of a lost masterpiece but also
for the way it combines Lewis' superb animal and human portraiture with his
eye for colour, costume and atmosphere - the twin attributes that make the
artist such an enduring feature of nineteenth century art.