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A MASTERPIECE BY MARY LINWOOD
A LARGE AND FINE GEORGE III EMBROIDERED NEEDLEWORK PICTURE OF ‘INSIDE OF A STABLE’ BY MARY LINWOOD (1755 1845), AFTER GEORGE MORLAND, DATED ‘1803’
worked in worsted wool and silks in a variety of stitches, with stitched signature lower centre and George Morland stitched signature middle right, in a glazed giltwood frame 144 x 198.5cm
Catalogue Note
This ‘tour de force’ of a tapestry is a life size version of George Morland’s painting ‘Inside of a Stable’ held by The Tate Gallery, London. The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1791 and given the size of the current lot and the length of time Miss Linwood took to create her works, it is quite probable that she saw the original painting at the RA when it was first exhibited.
Mary Linwood was born in Birmingham to Matthew and Hannah Linwood, being baptised on 18th July 1755. Her father was a linen draper and her mother an embroiderer but later founded and ran the Priory Boarding School in Leicester where Mary went to study. In the early 1770’s, Mary joined the staff at The Priory, by then a well respected finishing school, and eventually went on to run the school as well as her own gallery in Leicester Square, London, that she opened in 1809.
Mary specialised in creating full scale versions of paintings by leading artists such as George Morland, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. She submitted several of her ‘pictures’ to the Royal Academy in the late 1780s which, although rejected for not being ‘a painting, drawing or sculpture’, were universally praised by the then President, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and many other artists who happened to see them. In 1789, she created the much celebrated Salvator Mundi, after Carlo Dolci, for which she was offered 3000 guineas, around £400,000 in today’s money. It is now in the Royal Collection.
After a number of well received exhibitions in London and other major British cities, attracting the attention of George III and Queen Charlotte along with many others from the higher echelons of society, Mary took the plunge and invested in her own gallery at Sir Joshua Reynold’s former studio in Savile House, Leicester Square, London. This was specifically to show her ‘needle paintings’, to promote the art of embroidery and quite probably her finishing school in Leicester. The gallery quickly became a highlight of the London tourist trail being featured in a number of publications including ‘Curiosities of London’ and Mogg’s ‘New Picture of London’ and ‘Visitors’ Guide to its Sights’ which states: “This beautiful style of needlework is the invention of a Leicestershire lady, and consists of fiftynine of the finest pictures in the English and foreign schools of art, possessing all the correct drawing, just colouring and light and shade of the original pictures from which they are taken; in a word, Miss Linwood’s exhibition is one of the most beautiful the metropolis can boast and should unquestionably be witnessed, as it deserves to be, by every admirer of art.” A watercolour of a view of Mary’s gallery (V&A, London, accession number P.61985) shows several of her pictures including the lot being offered here and a ‘biographical sketch’ in La Belle Assemblee issued in November 1821, says that “The Farmer’s Stable, after Morland, is as fine a copy of the original picture as can be conceived, perhaps, in any branch of art; but, considered as a piece of needlework, its truth and effect in drawing and colouring, and the clear making out of the minute detail, is a rare curiosity”.
The present lot is listed in the 1812 catalogue ‘Mary Linwood’s Gallery of Pictures in Worsted, Leicester Square’, No.10 ‘Farmer’s Stable, Morland’.
£5,0008,000
