Samuel John Lamorna Birch British, 1869-1955
Dawn Breaking over Jungfrau, January, 1912
oil on panel
25 x 35.5 cm
9 7/8 x 14 in
9 7/8 x 14 in
signed
signed and inscribed verso, with another painting
signed and inscribed verso, with another painting
Painted in January 1912 at Wengen, Switzerland, where Birch stayed with the Lamorna artist Benjamin Eastlake Leader (son of B. W. Leader RA). Birch sat in the snow just before...
Painted in January 1912 at Wengen, Switzerland, where Birch stayed with the Lamorna artist Benjamin Eastlake Leader (son of B. W. Leader RA). Birch sat in the snow just before dawn to work on this study. He wrote home (February 7th, from Hotel Bristol), `The more I see of this place the more amazed I am of its wonders. The dawn breaks over Jungfrau, lemon and lilac, the mountain itself looking a delicate lilac-coloured moss, tinged with pink; green sheened and ethereal .. too beautiful almost for reality.`
The frame of the picture is incised with the opening lines from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: `Awake: for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that put the stars to flight .. And lo: the hunter of the east has caught the Sultan's turret in the noose of light.'
The frame of the picture is incised with the opening lines from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: `Awake: for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that put the stars to flight .. And lo: the hunter of the east has caught the Sultan's turret in the noose of light.'
Provenance
Austin Wormleighton (1937-2019)Exhibitions
Plymouth City Museum, Falmouth Art Gallery, Lamorna Birch RA RWS: A Retrospective (November 1987-February 1988; and August-September 1997)Warrington Museum & Art Gallery; Salford Quays, The Lowry; Birkenhead, Williamson Art Gallery, Shades of British Impressionism, Lamorna Birch and his Circle, A Memorial Exhibition, October 2024-February 2025
Literature
Austin Wormleighton, A Painter Laureate: Lamorna Birch and his Circle (Whitefox Publishing, 2025), illustrated p.194 (detail) and p.212
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