A Lakeland Scene In Borrowdale / Oil On Canvas - Julius Caesar Ibbetson

A fine, highly detailed and romantic early 19th century lakeland landscape by celebrated British artist Julius Caesar Ibbotsen R.A

Signed and dated by the artist 1802 lower right, this work features expansive views of the Borrowdale valley with cows grazing as well as a carriage and its occupants about to cross a stream.

Ibbetson’s oil paintings of the Lake District are among his most sought after, and this prime example has even greater interest for being painted by him in 1802, when the artist was living in the area at Troutbeck.

Ibbetson first visited the Lake District in 1798, and exhibited Lakeland views at the Royal Academy from 1799, when he stayed at Rydal. Following his marriage to Bella Thompson, in 1801, he moved to the Lake District to live at Ambleside.

After Ibbotsen moved to Masham, Yorkshire in circa 1804 he continued to paint views of the Lake District, however these lack the immediacy and and romance of the work that is offered here.

Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817) Yorkshire born Ibbetson gained his unusual Christian names are the result of his Caesarean birth. He specialised in landscapes with figures and animals, of which this one of the very finest examples. HIs style of painting was characterised by Sir Ellis Waterhouse as ‘more natural than de Loutherbourg's, and more civilized than Morland's’; Benjamin West called him ‘the Berchem of England’ in recognition of his debt to the Dutch 17th century landscape painters.

Ibbotsen worked mainly in his native Yorkshire, but also at times in London, Scotland, and the Lake District, and in 1787–8 he was draughtsman on a British mission to China, during which he visited Java. He worked in watercolour as well as oil and also made etchings.

An amiable rough diamond with a drink problem Ibbotsen was not always welcome in polite society. Eventually the Wordsworths stopped taking tea with the Ibbotsens and when writing to Lady Beaumont, Dorothy passed on the opinion that the artist’s conversation was ‘unbecoming and indecent’.
In 1803 he published a manual on painting. Like his friend Morland, Ibbetson is said to have been given to dissipation, but his work did not obviously suffer because of this in the way that Morland's did. The artist dies in Masham, Yorkshire in 1817.

This museum quality work is in an excellent state of conservation and ready to hang and enjoy in its original hand carved and gilded frame.
Higher resolution images on request.

Worldwide shipping available.

Internal Ref: PP000164

Canvas: 22" x 27” / 56 x 69 cm.
Framed: 26” x 32” / 66 x 82 cm.