William Tomkins
(English painter, circa 1730 – 1792)
At Bonhams sold as “Tourists visiting a limestone cave, most likely showing Kent's Cavern, Torquay”
Oil on canvas : 65,7 X 81,2 cm
Signed and dated lower right “Wm Tomkins 1773”
Sold at Bonhams London, 9/07/14
For 52.500 £ = 66.096 €
Subsequently in London, with the Derek Johns Ltd. Gallery and the Theo Johns Fine Art Gallery
as “The visit of Mr and Mrs Hamilton, Lieutenant General Edward Ligonier and Lady Mary Henley and Vicar William Gilpin to Painshill Grotto in 1772”
Currently at Flint House (Buckinghamshire), Lord Jacob Rothschild Collection
Detail
This is a comparative item
Painting for Sale
Anonymous 19th century French painter
"A couple visiting a grotto"
In short
Natural caves holding stalactites and stalagmites are a very rare theme in European art. Centuries of dripping water have created these marvels. Between the 16th and the late 19th century many fake, man-made grottoes have been incorporated in palace gardens and parks. Probably the oldest painting showing them dates from 1773.
The setting of our painting is absolutely magical. The fairylike light illuminates the strange forms of the stalactites and the stalagmites.
About grottoes in Western art
Since Antiquity grottoes have been inspiring places: the Roman emperor Tiberius filled a grotto in the grounds of his villa in Sperlonga with statues.
The final of the in 1589 published and all over Europe immensely popular tragicomedy “Il pastor fido” from Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538 – 1612) is also set in a grotto.
In 17th century paintings caverns were regularly used as exotic dwellings of the hermit Saint Anthony or of classical nymphs. Other painters used them as poetic background for Vanitas scenes set amidst Roman sculptures and columns.
Strangely enough very few grotto interiors were painted during the following 18th and 19th century.
But it is important to stress here that all these grotto paintings represented caverns without stalactites or stalagmites.
Artificial caves that did hold them became a popular garden feature since 16th century Mannerism until well into the 19th century.
In Bavaria in Germany the most Romantic of kings, Ludwig II, had himself two artificial dripstone caves built in the second half of the 19th century after the first act of the Wagner opera "Tannhäuser":
- in the garden of Linderhof Palace the cave with its lake and waterfall was modelled in 1876/77. This Venus Grotto features a "royal seat", a Lorelei rock and a gilt swan-boat in the shape of a shell.
- on the third floor of Neuschwanstein Castle (1869 – 1887) sits a small grotto between the Living Room and the King’s Study.
The oldest painted representation of visitors inspecting a grotto with its characteristic stalactites and stalagmites is to my knowledge the painting by William Tomkins of 1773. But Painshill Grotto in Painshill Park near Cobham, Surrey is an artificial cavern created with quartz, calcite and fluorite crystals in the third quarter of the 18th century.
Why should you buy this painting?
Because it is an absolutely mesmerising scene set in a very rare, magical location: visitors in a shimmering grotto interior with the strange forms of rocks, stalactites and stalagmites lit and coloured by one beam of sunlight.
Comparative paintings
Click photos for more details
