George Garrard

T03299 COOMBE HILL 1791

Inscribed ‘Coomb Hill 1791’ below the painted area and the same on the back of the board; there is a further, illegible inscription on the back. The backboard of the frame in which the work was acquired was inscribed in a later hand ‘Coombe Hill/1794/ G. Garrard ARA’
Oil, 5 1/2 × 7 3/4 (13.5 × 18.5), on card, 6 1/4 × 7 3/4 (15.9 × 19.4)
Purchased at Sotheby's (Grant-in-Aid) 1981
Prov: ...; said to have been sold at auction, Ringwood, Hants. 1981; acquired from the purchaser by Christopher Wright and sold by him, Sotheby's 22 July 1981 (142, repr.), bt William Drummond for the Tate Gallery.

Garrard made a number of landscape sketches in oil during the 1790s. Dated or datable examples include ‘Hyde Park from Knightsbridge’ of 1793 (exh. A Decade of English Naturalism 1810–1820, Norwich Castle Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, 1969–70, no.25, repr.), ‘Tring Park’ of c. 1793 (ibid., no.23, repr.), both formerly in the collection of Edward Croft-Murray, and ‘Mr Taylor's Barn at Marlow’ of c. 1797 (coll. Denys Oppé, exh. Landscape in Britain c. 1750–1850, Tate Gallery 1973–4, no.98, repr.). The latter was used for the background of a larger painting, ‘Portrait of a Fat Holderness Heifer’, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797. T03299 is the earliest dated example so far known of Garrard's landscape sketching in oil. Without more detailed knowledge of his movements in the 1790s, it is impossible to say which of the many places called Coombe or Combe is depicted. The Coombe Hill closest to London, however, would seem to be the one just south of Richmond Park.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1980-82: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1984