John Hayter Lithograph Print Early 19th Century Le Cadeau Original

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STOCK NUMBER: JX-496

TITLE: John Hayter, Le Cadeau – Original early 19th-century lithograph print

HEIGHT: 25.8cm / 10.16"
WIDTH: 19.4cm / 7.64"

CONDITION: In very good condition for its age. The odd minor mark away from the image. Please see photos for detail.There are historic adhesive marks and/or paper remnants to the corners on the verso, from previous mounting.

FRAMING: Unframed.

SIGNED: Pencil signed lower right.
INSCRIBED: Pencil inscribed with title and artist's address, 13 Foley Place, London.
DATED: --

+ Artwork Summary

An original early 19th-century lithograph print, John Hayter, Le Cadeau.

A very fine hand-coloured and pencil signed lithograph by Painter-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria, John Hayter (1800–1895). The lithography shows wonderful spontaneity and achieves a Romantic atmosphere, apt for its picturesque allegorical subject.

Hayter was the second son of the miniaturist Charles Hayter. He first painted Queen Victoria when she was twelve years old. Hayter established himself during the 1820s, with portraits of notable figures such as the Duke of Wellington. His portrait drawings, in chalks or crayons, became particularly popular, a number of them being engraved for The Court Album, which contained portraits of the female aristocracy.

John's brother, Sir George Hayter, was also a portrait painter; both artists were talented draughtsmen and experimented in techniques of engraving—their work early examples of printmaking before the etching revival that was to come later in the middle of the century.

This lithograph is one of a series of three that we have for sale (see JX-496 to JX-498).

On grey paper.

+ Read the S&W Collection Research

This work forms part of a beautiful collection of pictures, principally by Caroline (Lyons) Pearson (1800–1879) and dating from the 1830s. The subjects comprise Swiss landscapes, along with other Continental views in the Pyrenees, France and Spain, as well as a few pictures of or by other family members.

The particular interest in Pearson's landscapes lies in her drawing technique, which combines brown wash with charcoal, producing an effect similar to that of lithography. The collection includes three beautiful portrait lithographs by Painter-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria, John Hayter (1800–1895), and it appears that Pearson's drawings emulate the dramatic effects of these works. Lithography was a relatively new medium in the 1830s, embraced by artists looking to reproduce the stirring shifts of tone that could be achieved with charcoal or black chalk. Some of Pearson's landscapes use charcoal so liberally across the sheet that they appear in turn to be influenced by the velvety tonal graduation that printing from ink on stone could achieve.

The result is that Pearson's drawings are imbued with a sense of romance, evoking the feeling of a place, not just representing it topographically. Her landscapes are a fine example of the popularity of Switzerland in the early 19th century thanks to Romantic poets such as Byron and Shelley and the Romantic imagination through which these landscapes were conceived.

Caroline Pearson was of considerable financial means, by birth and through marriage. She was daughter of John Lyons of Antigua, who owned St Austin’s, an 190-acre estate in the New Forest, Lymington, Hampshire. She had a sister, Catherine, who is also recorded as an artist; there is a collection of watercolours, depicting her travels between the French Pyrenees and the Alps, in the Radnorshire Museum at Llandrindod Wells. It is likely that the sisters travelled and sketched together. In 1820 Caroline married Henry Shepherd Pearson (1776–1840), who was acting Governor of Penang from 1807 to 1808. When Henry died in 1840 they were residing at Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France.

Caroline moved in privileged circles and would have associated with influential figures of the day. Her landscape drawings attest to this, with subjects including a view from Lord Brougham's garden at Cannes, and views at M. Haldimand's Lake Geneva. Lord Brougham, newly arrived at Cannes in 1834, played a fascinating role in the making of modern Cannes, and English-Swiss Jane Marcet (née Haldimand) was an innovative writer of popular, explanatory science books, whose works were an early inspiration for the young Michael Faraday.