Two professors today made a public appeal to find lost art treasures featuring Yorkshire landscapes which mysteriously disappeared over 150 years ago.
Art historians Professor Ann Sumner, Brontë Parsonage Museum Director, and David Jackson, Professor of Russian and Scandinavian Art Histories at the University of Leeds, launched the appeal today in Haworth at a talk about pioneering romantic landscape painter Thomas Fearnley, who was born in Norway, but whose grandfather emigrated from Heckmondwike in the late eighteenth century.
Obsessed with painting landscapes and nature in authentic detail, Fearnley was one of the first artists ever to regularly paint en plein air (in the open air), and made a trip to explore his roots in Yorkshire and the Lake District in 1837.
It was during this period that he met Yorkshire artist C W Cope and his wife, stayed with the Elam family of Thorns Hall, painted pictures of the Yorkshire Moors and Dentdale, and left behind him 24 oil sketches on paper. Fearnley died shortly afterwards from typhus at the tragically young age of 39, and was never able to reclaim his paintings. The Copes sold 17 of them to a Mr Solly, and to Sir Charles Forbes, and probably kept the remaining seven. Of the 24 paintings not a single one can now be traced.
Now revered as one of Norway’s top painters, a pupil of J C Dahl, and with a whole room dedicated to his work in the Oslo National Gallery, Fearnley’s paintings today sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
He began his Yorkshire travels on the paddle steamer from London to Hull, then travelled to Sedbergh, and got very lost on the Yorkshire Moors which reminded him of his native Norway. Local people mistook him for a pedlar and asked him to sell them cotton thread!
It was while writing a book together – In Front of Nature: The European Landscapes of Thomas Fearnley (pictured) – that the two professors realised this priceless hoard of Yorkshire landscape paintings had entirely vanished.
‘It’s likely his beautiful, detailed paintings still hang in someone’s house, or are stored in an attic somewhere,’ says Ann Sumner. ‘Although his Lake District views are well known, his Yorkshire paintings have never been traced, and, as Fearnley historians, David and I are most anxious to do so. It would be wonderful if someone found a Fearnley signature, or recognised his style. If anyone knows anything at all about their whereabouts, please do contact us, and we will investigate further.’
If you believe you own a Thomas Fearnley painting, or know where one may be found, contact Professor Sumner, or write to her at Brontë Parsonage Museum, Church Street, Haworth BD22 8DR, United Kingdom.