SAMUEL PROUT
(1783-1852)
 

Palais de Justice, Rouen (formerly known as A Continental Cathedral and Market Scene)

c.1819-21

pen and brown ink with washes of grey, heightened with white on light brown paper

43 x 31.6 cm

inscribed: S.P 1815

P.348

When bought this was titled A Continental Cathedral and Market Scene,  but the view was identified by Richard Lockett author of Samuel Prout, 1985. Lockett advises that Prout never signed S.P and did not go to France until 1819. Lockett dates this 1819-21 and compares it to Street View with St Laurent, Rouen in the Manchester City Art Gallery. Prout painted several other watercolours of the Palais de Justice but one formerly attributed to him in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, dated 27 September 1817, is now ascribed to EDRIDGE, whose drawings are closely connected to Prout’s at this date.     

Prout was born in Plymouth. Between 1803 and 1813 he contributed twenty-three views for John Britton’s The Beauties of England and Wales. But the watercolours that earned him the high praise from John RUSKIN were mainly of Gothic buildings and scenes in France, Belgium, the Rhineland and Italy, which he often visited after 1819. In that year he was elected to the O.W.S. and exhibited fifty-one drawings there during the next thirty-three years.    

EJ

PROVENANCE: C. Kersley ?; P&D Colnaghi Ltd, from whom purchased by Gallery, July 1960.

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.