Alice Boyd

(British, 1823-1897)

Steps to the studio, Penkill House; Cappella di S. Clemente, S. Marco the larger 35 x 25cm (13 3/4 x 9 13/16in)

Footnotes

Alice Boyd painted several watercolour studies outside the stable studio or in the grounds at Penkill Castle. For Alice and William Bell Scott, the summer months were spent painting at Penkill and entertaining friends from their circle including Dante Gabriel Rosetti and his sister Christina. In 1874, Lawrence and Laura Alma Tadema spent most of September with Alice and Scott and the watercolour of the brightly plumed peacock amongst the roses of 1875 conveys hints of the Aesthetic movement combined with Alice's natural talent for painting wildlife.

From May 26 to July 6, 1873, Alice, William Bell Scott, Letitia, William Rosetti and Lucy Maddox Brown went on a European tour. A sketch book containing Alice's drawings in the Dick Institute, Ayrshire (Accession number PK/U3) chronicles a pictorial journey through the tour starting in Chambery, France and afterwards travelling through Italy; Turin, Bay of Spezia, Rome, Venice, Verona, Lake Lugano, Bodio and St. Gotthard. Ellen Clayton in her dictionary entry for Alice, mentions the painting Chapel of San Clemente, St Marc's Venice in the artist's studio.¹ This was presumably the oil painting (63 x 58) The Church of St. Clemente, Venice 1873 which was sold by Christie's at the Penkill Castle, Girvan, Ayrshire sale, (15 December 1992, lot 176), a fully worked up version of the present watercolour. William Bell Scott sketched a similar view of the Church of St Clemente (National Galleries of Scotland, Accession number D4715.28B). Drawn in pencil at a slightly different angle, it is described as The Interior of St. Marks.

¹ Ellen C Clayton, English Female Artists,London, 1876, Vol II, pp. 47-50.