Thomas Uwins RA (1782 - 1857)
RA Collection: Art
A pencil drawing of a kneeling woman seen in profile. This drawing is a study for Uwins' painting 'Castellamare' which depicts a Neapolitan girl kneeling by a column, holding a basket of fruit and looking over the harbour below.
Uwins visited Italy between 1824 and 1831. Writing from Naples to his brother David on 6 May 1826, Uwins describes his painting of Castellamare as representing: 'a young girl in her holiday dress, waiting with anxious expectation the coming of her lover; she has a basket of grapes in her hand, and the signal of the appointment (two green boughs crossed) is seen at her feet. The background represents the town of Castellamare with the surrounding hills'.
This work comes from one of sixteen volumes of Royal Academy Annual Exhibition catalogues that were collected and extra-illustrated by the lawyer and antiquarian Edward Basil Jupp F.S.A. (1812 - 1877). The catalogues span the period from the first annual exhibition in 1769 up to 1875. Jupp added drawings, prints, letters and autographs by, or referring to, Academicians and other exhibitors at the Academy's annual exhibition.
E.B. Jupp was a solicitor who married Eliza Kay, daughter of the architect William Porden Kay. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a clerk of the Carpenters' Company, of which he published a history. Jupp amassed a large collection of paintings by British and Dutch artists, drawings, prints, books and porcelain most of which was sold after his death, at Christie's in February 1878.
Many of the drawings in Jupp's Royal Academy extra-illustrated volumes were bought from art sales during the 1860s. He was also acquainted with a number of contemporary artists and several drawings in the later volumes (along with many of the letters and autographs) were sent from the artists themselves.
230 mm x 139 mm