Verso: a study in watercolour of ruins (possibly at Pompeii)

Watercolour with bodycolour, 23 by 28 cm

Provenance: the John Physik Collection

Literature: Peter Trippi, J.W.Waterhouse, Phaidon, London, 2002, p.37 (illustrated in colour pl.21)

Exhibited: Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, John William Waterthouse, RA, 1849-1917, cat no.32

Peter Trippi identifies the present work as a likely Neapolitan subject dating from c.1877 and painted on one of a number of documented painting trips that Waterhouse made to Italy. Here Waterhouse encountered an oddly antiquated world that would appear largely untouched by the dramatic advances seen in industry and society in nineteenth century England: “the small, sparkling, An Italian Produce Shop...may be – the watercolour A Chestnut Vendor which Waterhouse exhibited at Dudley in 1879. Although the costumes locate this scene in the nineteenth century, it could almost be antique, so little had changed in Italy in contrast to London.” (Trippi, op cit, p.37). Such trips were to provide inspiration for the mythical world of the great Classical subjects he executed later in his career.