Type: Sketchbooks (2) – 70 drawings - pen and ink, bistre wash,

Subject: Italian Countryside, Portraits

Artist: Henrietta Anne (sometimes spelled Ann) Fortescue (Hoare) (1763-1841) [English Artist]

Locations: Italy

Dates: 1810s-20s

Sizes (size of sketchbooks): 15 1/4 x 10 5/8 inches & 12 x 9 1/8 inches.

Content: Two sketchbooks owned by Henrietta Anne Fortescue contains seventy pen and ink drawings, many with bistre (sepia) wash. The larger sketchbook, titled “Bistre Sketches," contains thirty-four full-page works of various scenes of Italy (some titled by Fortescue) and twenty-two sketches (two per page) that are copies by Fortescue of works by Carlo Labruzzi (1748–1817) (also sometimes spelled Labruzzo). The smaller sketchbook is titled and signed “H.A. Fortescue copied from La Bruzzi” on the inside of the front cover. This sketchbook contains 14 works.

History: Henrietta Anne Hoare Acland Fortescue (b. 1765; d. 2 September 1841 in Surrey, England) was an English artist and traveler. Henrietta was the daughter of Sir Richard Hoare, 1st Bt. (1735–1787) and Frances Ann Acland (b. 1735). Henrietta trained under Francis Nicholson (1753–1844) and visited Italy in 1817 and 1821. Her half-brother, Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838), had traveled extensively in France, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy (1785–1791) and published Hints to the Travelers in Italy (1815) and the Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily (1819). Some engravings of her drawings appeared in the 1st and 4th editions of W. S. Gilly’s Narrative of an Excursion to the Mountains of Piedmont in the Year XXIII (1827). Henrietta’s first husband was Sir Thomas Dyke-Acland (1752–1794), and her second husband was Royal Navy Commander Matthew Fortescue Jr. (1754–1842).

Condition: The bound works have varying degrees of soiling and foxing. The sketchbook covers have wear and soiling. See pictures.   

Picture Note: Please note due to size constraints I have only supplied pictures of a portion of the sketch book contained in this collection. I can supply more pictures upon request. 

References:

Art and landscape history: British artists in nineteenth century Val d’Aosta (NW Italy) by Pietro Piana, Charles Watkins and Ross Balzaretti

Henrietta Ann Hoare Acland Fortescue. Find a Grave

Stourhead: Henry Hoare’s Paradise Revisted by Dudly Dodd. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021

Item Number: G0109