Deutscher and Hackett

In 1794 the 27 year old John Glover moved to Lichfield near Birmingham, providing the opportunity to make sketching tours of the surrounding picturesque districts and beyond. Between 1795 and 1804 he exhibited views in Cumberland, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Wales and Scotland at the Royal Academy.

A number of views at Matlock in Derbyshire’s Peak District were shown in London between 1803 and 1848 at exhibition venues including the Royal Academy, the Society of Painters in Oils and Water Colours, and the artist’s own gallery at 16 Old Bond Street. The subject of our painting is possibly the High Tor Matlock, Derbyshire.

The following excerpt is quoted from Hansen, D., John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 2003, p. 55

‘[By 1805,] Although now established [in London], Glover did not entirely forsake the Midlands. Miss Moserby, a former pupil, reported to [Joseph] Farington in 1808 that Glover had moved his family from Lichfield to nearby Sutton Coldfield, and would return there “during most part of the winter”.¹ ... Following a common practice among landscapists, he also spent some weeks each year on sketching tours. On the evidence of dated sketchbooks and by noting the first appearance of particular regional subjects in Society exhibitions, we can conclude that he travelled to Newcastle, Durham and the Lake District in 1805, Devon in 1806, South Wales and Kent in 1807, Wales again in 1808, Wales and Surrey in 1809, Lancashire in 1810 and back to the Lakes in 1811.

Given the difficulties of pre-railway transport, especially to remote Picturesque locations, Glover covered a remarkable amount of territory. In sketchbook 70 he gives a list of towns and distances travelled, a total of 1,388 miles (2,220 km).’

1. Joseph Farrington diary, April 20 1808, vol. IX, p. 3263, in The Diary of Joseph Farington (16 vols), New Haven and London, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University Press, 1978–84, as cited in Hansen, op. cit.