HARRY JOHN JOHNSON, R.I. (1826-1874)

A NOCTURNE WITH THE LYCIAN SARCOPHAGUS AT TELMESSOS
Signed l.r. Harry Johnson
Oil on canvas
31.5 x 61.5 cm
 
PROVENANCE:
The Artist's studio sale, Christie's, London, 05.03.1885, Lot 691 (sold for £246) (a); 
Where acquired by William Permain, King St., London;
Private collection, Italy (until 2022)
 
EXHIBITED:
London, Royal Academy, 1881, no. 475 (A Grecian Tomb)
 
 
 
 
 
 
We are grateful to Dr Terrance Duggan for his generous assistance with the cataloguing of this painting. 
 
 
“Both Muller and Johnson may also have been influenced by the earlier drawing of this same tomb which was made on the 29th of October 1841 from a rowing boat by John Harrison Allan, which was entitled, Sea-girt tomb Telmessos…” (b)
 
 
 
Harry Johnson was born in Birmingham, where he studied under Samuel Restell Lines. He was later a pupil of William Muller's in London, whom he accompanied as a student on the artist's trip to Lycia (modern-day Turkey) in 1843, from the 22nd of October 1843 to the 19th of February 1844, meeting with the British Naval expedition and its advisor Charles Fellows at Xanthus (1). Muller's watercolour views of Western Anatolia from that trip were a formative influence on Johnson’s style (2). The present work derives from Johnson's own sketches, made when he was just seventeen years old, and it is remarkable to consider that in this, one of his final works, he was still using these early studies, such was the trip's impact on him.
 
This romanticised view depicts an actual Lycian sarcophagus, in the characteristic limestone, one that is similar in type to the famous Parian marble example discovered a few years later in Sidon, Lebanon. Situated in what was once the ancient Lycian city of Telmessos, Johnson painted it on at least one other occasion, with that work sold at Bonham’s in 2008 (Anonymous sale, New Bond St., 21.05.2008, Lot 135, Water Tomb, Telmessus, Lycia). The present work, the only known version in oils, was the last of Johnson's paintings to be exhibited in his lifetime (3) (4). His teacher Muller is known to have painted a number of versions of this subject as well, though none are nocturnes such as this.
 
 
Johnson returned to London after his Lycian trip, where he became a member of the Clipstone Street Academy, which was earning an outstanding reputation as an art school. Muller had secured the comparatively young Johnson's entry to the Academy, having himself been introduced to the group by its honourary secreary Joseph John Jenkins in 1840. (5)
 
'In emulation of Dutch seventeenth-century artists, one of the principal activities of this group was to bring low-life types from the streets into its improvised studio as models for sketching exercises' wrote A.E. Miller in a catalogue entry for a work by Frederick Goodall, an associate of the Academy, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (5). Johnson did precisely this throughout his career, making several surprisingly tender and candid watercolour sketches of local children and everyday events which he encountered on his travels, both in Lycia and afterwards (he would go on to visit France, Italy, North Africa and Greece). 
 
 
Johnson befriended David Cox Sr., another fellow Birmingham artist, and joined him on his first trip to Bettws-y-Coed in Wales in 1844, accompanying the great landscapist on further trips to North Wales afterwards. Cox's works were also to have an influence on Johnson; however, theirs was more a friendship than a pedagogical relationship. Johnson was elected an associate member of the Royal Institute of Painters In Water-Colours (R.I.) in 1868 by a unanimous vote, and a full member two years later.