Canaletto, the Sandbys, and ‘Mr Crowle’

 

 

 

Philip Steadman

 

 

 

In 1747 Antonio Canaletto painted a view of ‘Windsor Castle from the north’ (Pl 1).^[1] Set in the frame is a contemporary handwritten note (Pl 2) – not by the artist – that reads:

‘This picture was painted by Signor Canaletti who took the View from the Window of the small Cottage at the end of the Inclosure next Mr Crowle’s Garden – & the Figures added by him at Percy Lodge.’

 

 

1 Windsor Castle from the North by Antonio Canaletto (1697–1768), 1747.
Oil on canvas, 84 x 137.7 cm. Collection of the Duke of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle

 

 

 

2 The label set into the frame of the painting in Pl 1

 

 

Charles Beddington, in an entry to the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Canaletto in England’ says that ‘nothing is known of “Mr Crowle”’.^[2] But Mr Crowle is not, in fact, a complete mystery, and his identification leads in interesting directions.

Canaletto had arrived in England the year before he painted this picture, which was the first occasion on which he painted outside London. The picture is known to have belonged to Hugh Smithson, first Duke of Northumberland, one of Canaletto’s major English patrons. But Beddington argues that it was originally commissioned, along with a view of Syon House, by Algernon Seymour, who owned Percy Lodge at Iver, Buckinghamshire – the place where Canaletto finished the work.^[3]

Jane Roberts in Views of Windsor: Watercolours by Thomas and Paul Sandby identifies ‘Mr Crowle’ as Richard Crowle who owned much of the land visible in the centre of Canaletto’s picture.^[4] The Crown acquired this estate from Crowle in 1755 in exchange for lands in Yorkshire and a plan was prepared for the transaction, which had to be approved by Act of Parliament.^[5] The estate included a house on the corner of Datchet Lane, whose upper storey – painted white – is visible in Canaletto’s painting, below the Castle, behind a wall that conceals a row of smaller houses. All these can be seen on the estate map (Pl 3).

 

 

3 ‘A plan of the Estate belonging to Richard Crowle Esq^r’, 1755.
Public Record Office PRO Work 34/175

 

 

A second map made by William Collier in 1742 (Pl 4) shows Pearman’s Close, the ‘Inclosure next Mr Crowle’s Garden’.^[6] At the extreme south end is the cottage from which Canaletto took his view (marked here by the red oval).

 

 

4 ‘A Plan of the Town and Castle of Windsor…’ by William Collier, 1742, detail.
The cottage where Canaletto worked is marked by a red oval, and Richard Crowle’s house by a red square

 

 

Looking at Collier’s map we can see how the artist, from this position, would have had the long wall that bounds the Castle’s ‘Little Park’ at his left. At the far end of this wall is Richard Crowle’s white house (marked here by the red square). At the right is the river and Romney Island. A small white summerhouse on the river appears both in the painting and in the map. (Beddington says that the viewpoint was on Romney Island, but the map, the inscription, and the picture itself prove that this is not the case.)

Thomas Sandby made a watercolour, dated by Paul Oppé to the 1790s, showing a view of Datchet Lane with the Castle at the left.^[7] The house that Richard Crowle had owned is at the right here, and in the foreground is the wall that enclosed the land behind the house (Pl 5).

 

 

5 Windsor Castle from a point east of the Isherwood Brewery, with the houses of Datchet Lane to the right,
by Paul Sandby (1731–1809), c1790. Watercolour, 21.8 x 43.6 cm Royal Collection, Windsor RL 14594

 

 

The Lane and all these houses were swept away when the railway arrived in the 19th century. Hester Davenport of the Windsor Local History Society has found out that Richard Crowle lived for only two more years after the land deal.^[8] He made a will in 1757 providing for his wife and two sons, one of whom was John Charles Crowle. Richard left money for John Charles’s education and set him up with a trust fund.

John Charles Crowle (1738–1811) is recorded in the History of Parliament as the son of Richard Crowle and Elizabeth Pearman of Fryston Hall, Yorkshire.^[9] (Since Richard’s garden in Windsor bordered on ‘Pearman’s’ Close, we may wonder whether Elizabeth was from a neighbouring family.) John Charles trained as a lawyer and from 1769 to 1774 was MP for Richmond, although he very rarely spoke in Parliament. His interests were rather in art and antiquities. He made the Grand Tour in the early 1760s, became a member of the Dilettanti Society in 1764, and was the Society’s secretary from 1774 to 1778. He appears in one of two group portraits of members of the Society painted by Joshua Reynolds where, wearing the robe and bands of secretarial office, he is standing at the back, third from the right, clinking glasses with two fellow-members (Pl 6). One of them, at his immediate right and facing him in near-profile, is Charles Greville (in profile in front of him is Lord Carmarthen and at Crowle’s left, holding the stem of a glass, is Joseph Banks).^[10] If John Charles is remembered today, it is for compiling what has become known as ‘The Crowle Pennant’, in the collection of the British Museum.

 

 

6 Members of the Society of Dilettanti: ‘Gems’, 1777–79.
Engraving by Charles Turner and William Say after Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792).
Detail showing, left to right, Lord Seaforth, Charles Greville, John Charles Crowle, Lord Carmarthen, and Joseph Banks

 

 

There was a fashion in the late-18th century for what became known as ‘grangerising’ or ‘extra-illustrating’. A printed book was dismembered, its pages glued into a much larger folio of blank sheets, and appropriate illustrations from other sources – prints, watercolours, drawings – were pasted in. Crowle grangerised Thomas Pennant’s Some Account of London, published in 1790.^[11] The final compilation occupies 14 large volumes, illustrated with some 3400 drawings, paintings, maps, and prints related to the history of London.^[12] These include many original watercolours by Paul and Thomas Sandby, as well as six engravings after views of London by Canaletto. Crowle was evidently an avid collector of the Sandbys’ work.

The Sandby brothers had a long association with Windsor, although not with the royal family.^[13] They made many watercolour views of the Castle, the town, the Park and the surrounding country. In his early career as a military draughtsman, Thomas was on the staff of the Duke of Cumberland – ‘the butcher of Culloden’ – and followed his campaigns in Scotland and the Netherlands. In 1746 the Duke was appointed Ranger of the Great Park at Windsor, where he embarked on a programme of improvements to the Park and the adjoining lake, Virginia Water. Thomas Sandby was employed on these works as a landscape architect and engineer. In 1765 he was made Deputy Ranger and moved to a house in the grounds, where he was often visited by Paul.

The Sandbys seem to have dogged Canaletto’s footsteps throughout the second half of the century. Thomas made a coloured drawing, Canaletto a painting, of the Old Horse Guards and the Banqueting House, from nearby viewpoints. This must have been in the later 1740s, since demolition work on the Horse Guards began in 1749. Canaletto painted views up and down the Thames from Somerset House around 1750. The Sandbys made watercolours in very elongated panoramic formats from the same viewpoints and in the same directions, taking in more of the gardens and trees. These were acquired by John Charles Crowle and formed part of his bequest to the British Museum along with the grangerised Pennant. Oppé believes that Thomas and Paul collaborated on these pictures. He says: ‘… where the assistance or example of Paul Sandby is to be presumed, the obvious imitation of Canaletto secured an element of picturesqueness.’^[14] Oppé sees the hand of Thomas in the rendering of brickwork and masonry, giving ‘the effect of fine embroidery’.

In the later 1740s Canaletto made five paintings and three drawings of Warwick Castle for Francis Greville, 1st Earl of Warwick. One of the drawings is a view of the south front from across the river Avon (Pl 7).^[15] Later, either Paul or Thomas Sandby drew a rather heavy-handed version of the same view (Pl 8).^[16]

 

 

7 Warwick Castle: the South Front by Antonio Canaletto, 1748.
Drawing, 31.7 x 57.8 cm. Private collection

 

 

 

8 Warwick Castle: the South Front by either Paul or Thomas Sandby (1721–1798), 1775–76.
Drawing, 27.6 x 47.4 cm. British Museum, 1904, 0819.33

 

 

Some changes had been made to the Castle in the interim, notably construction of the round tower on the mound at the left. Canaletto’s version is truer to the building’s real proportions. Some 12 drawings by Paul Sandby were in the collection of the Castle in 1809.^[17]

We saw John Charles Crowle enjoying a drink with Charles Greville in Reynolds’s picture of the Dilettanti Society. Charles Greville was the second son of Canaletto’s patron at Warwick, Francis Greville. Also holding a glass to clink with them was the great botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who acquired 67 of Paul Sandby’s views of Windsor and Eton. Banks accompanied Paul on a sketching tour of Wales, and Paul’s volume of XII views in South Wales, published in 1775, is dedicated jointly to Banks and Charles Greville.

To pull all this together… We have seen how the Sandbys on occasion painted the same subjects as Canaletto. Paul Sandby and Canaletto shared the patronage of the Grevilles at Warwick – indeed Paul was given two of Canaletto’s drawings of the Castle, probably by the 2nd Earl. Did Canaletto and the Sandbys know each other? Or did the brothers just see and copy prints and paintings by the older artist? Michael Liversidge and Jane Farrington, in the catalogue of their exhibition ‘Canaletto in England’ say that Paul would have seen Canaletto’s work at Warwick and probably also his paintings and drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, which had been purchased by George III from Joseph Smith in Venice in 1763/64.^[18]

Oppé and others date most of the Sandbys’ Windsor pictures somewhat vaguely to the 1760s and ’70s, presumably because that was when both were working in the locality. None of the pictures carries a specific date. But might some of them have been made earlier? Thomas and Canaletto both made views of the Old Horse Guards in St James’s Park before 1749. Might the two have met then?

One striking fact about the two pictures of the south front of Warwick Castle (Pl 7, Pl 8) is that they are very similar but not identical. Paul (or Thomas) records the new round tower, and so it seems that one or the other Sandby did not just work from a Canaletto painting or drawing but returned to the site. There is another similar case, which brings us full circle. Thomas made a tinted drawing of Windsor Castle from the north, undated (Pl 9),^[19] that closely resembles Canaletto’s painting of 1747 (Pl 1).

 

 

9 The North Front of Windsor Castle by Thomas Sandby, dated as ‘c1760–70’.
Watercolour, 14.5 x 33.2 cm. Royal Collection, Windsor Castle RCIN 914590

 

 

But it is not exactly the same view and must again have been made on site. We see the wall of the ‘Little Park’ and Richard Crowle’s house. The viewpoint could not be in the cottage but must be somewhere further forward in Pearman’s Close.

Thomas was working for the Duke of Cumberland in the Park when Canaletto made his painting. Is it too much to imagine that, when Thomas first came to Windsor, he got to know Richard Crowle, whose land was just over the boundary wall from the Park? And that it was Thomas who introduced Canaletto to ‘Mr Crowle’ and arranged for the artist to work from the cottage? Of all those English painters of the period who were influenced by Canaletto, the Sandbys would have had the most in common with the Venetian visitor. If Richard Crowle did meet the Sandbys at this time, was this how his son John Charles came to be such a keen collector of the brothers’ work?

 

Afterthought, added November 2025

Who wrote the note on the frame of Canaletto’s painting? If it was Thomas Sandby who introduced Canaletto to Richard Crowle, perhaps the note is his? We can compare the writing with other known examples of Thomas Sandby’s hand, for example, a letter in the form of a poem to his friend Theodosius Forrest of about 1755 (Pl 10). Compare the word ‘This’ at the start of both documents (see Pl 10a).

 

 

10 Thomas Sandby, letter to Theodosius Forrest, c1755. Pen and ink and watercolour. British Library, London, Add. MS 36994, f2v

 

10a Detail of Pl 2 above

 

 

They are practically identical. The styles of handwriting are similar in many other respects, in particular the long ascenders and descenders. It does look as though Thomas wrote the inscription on the painting, adding weight to the idea that he knew Canaletto and had a part in bringing him to Windsor.

 

 

 

1. I am grateful for help with archival research to Allison Derrett of the Royal Archives at Windsor, James Mould of the Berkshire Record Office, Steph Bennett of the West Yorkshire History Centre, and Philippa Helliwell of the National Archives at Kew. I also received much help from the staff of the Prints and Drawings Collection at the British Museum and the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.The painting (84 x 137.7 cm, oil on canvas) is in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle. ↑
2. Charles Beddington, Canaletto in England, catalogue of an exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art and Dulwich Picture Gallery 2006/7, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2006, cat. 41 and p138. ↑
3. Ibid. ↑
4. Jane Roberts, Views of Windsor: Watercolours by Thomas and Paul Sandby, Merrell Holberton, London 1995, p76 ↑
5. ‘A plan of the Estate belonging to Richard Crowle Esqr’, ca. 1755: Public Record Office, London, Work 34/175. ↑
6. ‘A Plan of the Town and Castle of Windsor and Little–Park, Town and College of Eton, Survey’d and Drawn by W. Collier of Eton, 1742’. ↑
7. In the Royal Collection at Windsor: see Roberts, Views of Windsor, pp.76–77. ↑
8. Hester Davenport of the Windsor Local History Group, ‘Canaletto and the Mysterious Mr Crowle’, online at Windlesora 24, 2008, citing PROB 11/831. ↑
9. Entries for Richard Crowle (1699–1757) and Charles John Crowle (c1738–1811) of Fryston Hall, Yorkshire, by Lewis Namier and John Brooke respectively, in History of Parliament, Vols 1754–1790, online at hist.parl.ac.uk. There is a portrait of Charles John by Pompeo Batoni dated 1762 in the Louvre. ↑
10. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Members of the Society of Dilettanti, ‘Gems’, 1777–79, in the collection of the Society. The Society was devoted as much to drinking as to antiquarianism, and there is erotic symbolism in the men’s gestures. See Robin Simon, ‘Reynolds and the double-entendre: The Society of Dilettanti portraits’, The British Art Journal, III, 1 (2002), pp69–77; Bruce Redford, Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth–Century England, Los Angeles 2008, ch 4, ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds’s “Star and Garter” pictures’. ↑
11. Thomas Pennant, Some Account of London, London 1790. Pennant grangerised or ‘extra–illustrated’ some of his own books. ↑
12. The Crowle Pennant is held in the Prints and Drawings Collection of the British Museum. Besides the Sandbys and the Canalettos, it contains original works by Michael Angelo Rooker, Charles Tomkins, John Varley, Thomas Girtin, William Daniell and many others. ↑
13. For the life and work of the Sandbys, besides Roberts, Views of Windsor, see AP Oppé, Sandby Drawings at Windsor Castle, Oxford and London 1957; Luke Hermann, Paul and Thomas Sandby, London 1986; and Edward Bruce Robertson, Paul Sandby and the Early Development of English Watercolor, PhD thesis, Yale University 1987. ↑
14. Oppé, Sandby Drawings, p12. ↑
15. Canaletto, Warwick Castle: the south front, drawing, 1748, in a private collection. ↑
16. Warwick Castle: the south front, watercolour, 1775/76, Prints and Drawings Collection, British Museum. The name Paul Sandby is printed on the mount, but someone has added ‘Not by’ in pencil. The obvious alternative is that it is the work of Thomas. ↑
17. Beddington, Canaletto in England, p149. ↑
18. Michael Liversidge and Jane Farrington, eds, Canaletto and England, London 1993, p105.19 Thomas Sandby, The North Front of Windsor Castle, watercolour, 14.5 x 33.2 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor. The picture is dated generically as ‘c1760–70’: but I wonder if it could have been made in the 1740s. ↑