Moretti Fine Art is delighted to announce the exhibition The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, a preparatory oil sketch rediscovered. The Gallery will anew participate in the 2023 winter edition of the London Art Week, and, in concomitance with the occasion, the exposition will be open on Friday, 1st December, in the Gallery’s London venue.
A newly rediscovered oil sketch by Paul Delaroche will be displayed, which can be seen as a fascinating token of his working procedure during the creation of one of the most celebrated paintings in London’s National Gallery, the Execution of Lady Jane Grey.
In addition to marking the event, Moretti Fine Art will host a talk on 4th December at 17.30. Stephen Bann CBE, FBA, the Emeritus Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol, will be in conversation with Christopher Riopelle, the Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings at The National Gallery.
Due to limited space, advanced booking is required. Please book your free seat here.
Delaroche’s preparatory studies are remarkable in their quality, and, while a high proportion of them are portraits on paper, a relatively small number are oil sketches that captured an individual’s appearance with rare insight and served as preliminary studies for paintings, making it possible to trace the development of his compositions. In the case of Jane Grey, this exquisite oil sketch is singular in its existence as the only preparatory oil sketch known for the painting. Furthermore, it clearly records the preliminary stages of the realisation of the great composition, expressing Delaroche’s concern with the pose of the figure of the Executioner. It is in this respect that the present oil sketch can be seen to play a significant role in the final stages of Delaroche’s work on Jane Grey. It becomes clear that this is the preparatory sketch in which he intensely scrutinised the body of the victim, which is thus simply expelled from the scene.
This perfectly executed work must be the first known example of an oil sketch of this type in Delaroche’s career. But it is not the last. The oil sketch featuring the Lieutenant of the Tower appears to be a worthy forerunner of the preparatory studies of particular scenes initiated in November 1833 following the commission for the church of La Madeleine, Paris, and the great series of oil sketches of the ‘Heads of Camoldine Monks’, realised in the early autumn of 1834. From these works, his manner of studying the characters of his greatest compositions becomes evident. By sketching out the various heads, hands and bodies of the striking models in multiple orientations, he profiles them against a ground of coloured pigment.
In this specific scene, he needed to work out the plastic effect of the final positioning of the Lieutenant as it might be rendered more fully in terms of colour and texture. The sparse white hairs that surmount the foreshortened features of the Lieutenant in the final painting are clearly foreshadowed here to leave space for a broadly square brown patch in the bottom left-hand section of the canvas. A detail that raises some suspense towards its purpose. Maybe Delaroche was imagining the presence of the Executioner’s block. Or he may simply have been sketching in the ground for another figure study.
MORETTI FINE ART
13 DUKE STREET, ST. JAMES'S
LONDON SW1Y 6DB
1 – 8 December 2023
OPENING HOURS
MONDAY - FRIDAY
10 AM - 6PM
exceptionally open on
Saturday December 2nd
Sunday December 3rd
12pm - 5 pm