English school circa 1790 - Storm and shipwreck scene on the Isle of Wight

Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817) attributed. Storm and shipwreck scene on the Isle of Wight circa 1795

Re-lined canvas of 66.5 by 61 cm
Frame of 88 by 72 cm

Our work is a reprint of the painting “a storm behind the Isle of Wight , 179_ » exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The painting was very successful, which explains why we are gradually discovering some replicas. A way for him and many other painters to support themselves, as soon as a painting was successful, it was replicated.

Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817)

Ibbetson, the second child of Richard Ibbetson, a Yorkshire draper, is said to have acquired his unusual middle name because he gave birth by caesarean section. Little is known of his early studies, probably supervised by Quakers, before his apprenticeship with John Fletcher, a naval painter in Hull, between 1772 and 1777. In 1777 he moved to London where his main employment was as a restorer of tables. In 1785, he exhibited his first painting at the Royal Academy, where he continued to exhibit for the next thirty years. Thanks to the intervention of Captain William Baillie, Ibbetson accompanied Colonel Charles Cathcart to the first British embassy in Peking. On his return in 1789, he visited Wales with Viscount Mountstuart (later 1st Marquess of Bute), whom he revisited in 1792, with another patron and connoisseur, Colonel Grant. After a visit to the Isle of Wight in 1790, he began painting shipwrecks and smugglers. In 1798, Ibbetson moved to Liverpool to assist the art dealer Thomas Vernon and made his first visits to the Lake District...and to escape his creditors who were chasing him to London. Moreover, throughout his life, his financial situation was complicated, only to improve late in his career. He began exhibiting views of the lakes at the Royal Academy in 1799. He moved to Rydal in 1801, after his marriage to Bella Thomson, and in 1802 he moved to Ambleside, on the northern edge of Lake Windermere, a bustling town which he remembered fondly in his last known oil painting, The Market Square at Ambleside. (1817; Temple Newsam House, Leeds). Although Ibbetson moved to Masham in 1805, he continued to remember the spectacular scenery of the Lake District. These views of Ullswater and Grasmere are typical of his finest lakeside compositions. Ibbeston died on October 13, 1817.