James Lynch (b. 1956)
Storm over Compton, Pauncefoot
£8,500
Maas Gallery, 13562
According to his obituary, Colonel Henry Howard was ‘One of the most versatile men in the Midlands’; he had been ‘magistrate, county councillor, sportsman, solicitor, manufacturer, and churchman …. He was fond of travelling and sketching, and his paintings were frequently exhibited.’ His detailed diary (private collection) for early 1890, the year he painted our picture, tells us of an intrepid adventure, escaping in his nightshirt from a burning train between Warsaw and St Petersburg into a freezing snow-covered forest. Later that year he left England again for Paris on October 3rd. It was a busy itinerary: after a couple of days’ sightseeing, on the 6th he took an overnight train to Geneva and a steamer to Villeneuve at the eastern end of Lake Geneva. He painted on the 7th, drove to Simplon on the 8th, crossed the Alps by the Pass, and arrived at Baveno on Lake Maggiore on the 12th, in hot sunny weather. He painted for a few days, and arrived by steamer in Locarno on the 15th. The entry in his diary for October 16th, of the week in which he painted this picture, reads: ‘P[ainted] at two until 5.30 pm on the lake: a magnificent day for cloud effect.’ Howard stayed around Locarno painting on the shores of the Lake every day ‘from 6 until 6’ until the 22nd, whilst the weather turned and a cold wind blew. He went on to Bellagio and Como, before returning via Lucerne and Basel to Paris, and finally to London on November 6th, where he examined Turner’s sketches of Lucerne in the National Gallery before going back to the Midlands.
