Charles Gore Arundel Castle
- Reference
- 11252 / KT750
- Category
- Landscapes
Charles Gore (1729-1807)
A view of the East front of Arundel Castle, West Sussex, seen from the Bowling Green
Inscribed l. r.: Arundel Castle taken from the Platform or/Bowling Green by Charles Gore Esq 1781 and indistinctly inscribed in pencil u. r.: Arundel Castle Sufsex/1781
Watercolour over touches of pencil on laid paper, with a Whatman watermark
19.6 by 49 cm., 7 ¾ by 19 ¼ inches
Provenance
Iolo Williams (1890-1962);
And by descent until sold Sotheby's, London, 13 July 1989, lot 5;
Private collection;
With Guy Peppiatt Fine Art
The bowling green is the name for the square earthworks located, with the fishponds, on the east side of the castle. They were probably made originally to improve the castle’s defences during the Civil War. Used as a bowling green in eighteenth century, as shown in the drawing by Charles Gore, today a rose garden can be found here.
The Hon. Charles Gore was the son of a Lincolnshire landowner and educated at Westminster. He married a wealthy heiress of a shipbuilding company and learnt to draw and design ships. Gore travelled extensively in Europe, sketching with the German artist Jacob Philipp Hackert (1737-1807). Gore copied marine oils, completed the unfinished drawings of other artists, and also developed his own style having acquired an expert knowledge of the sea. His interest in classical antiquities led Charles Gore to join Hackert and Richard Payne Knight on their expedition to Sicily from April to June 1777.
In 1779 Gore returned to England and became a member of the Dilettanti Society in 1781. He painted a series of panoramic views of Sussex including the current drawing. The family returned to the Continent in 1782 and he settled in Weimar in 1791 with his daughter Eliza.
Examples of Gore's work can be found in the British Museum, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Weimar.
