Musée No:737.180
Regular price £25.00Avignon: Bridge over a River
Artist: Hercules Brabazon Brabazon
Date: 1821 - 1906
Hercules Brabazon Brabazon (1821 –1906 – born Hercules Brabazon Sharpe) was an English watercolour artist. His father wanted him to be a lawyer but instead he left England and headed to Rome to study music and art. His father tried to make him return by cutting his allowance, but in 1847 when his elder brother died he inherited family estates in Connaught and became financially independent, on condition that he change his surname to Brabazon. From then on he led a life of travel, (mostly in Europe but with trips to Africa and India), art study and painting. He was inspired by the works of artists such as Velázquez and Turner. Wonderfully he described himself as a gentleman amateur living “for Art and Sunshine”. He didn’t show or try to sell his work until his mid-seventies when encouraged by his artist friends including John Singer Sargent. I love this caricature of Brabazon’s life in retirement lazing in the spas and resorts of the Riviera, playing piano with the friends like Franz Liszt, relaxing at his grand estates. "Thoughts from HBB" was written by a friend in 1879: “I live in London at times, then comes a dull day, murky, I shudder, I seize a carpet bag, I pack in it a paintbox, a sketching block, a dozen of chinese white, a shirt, a pocket handkerchief, a Beethoven a Brahms and a Chopin — I stuff them into the bag — I rush downstairs into a hansom — "Where to Sir?" "To Egypt" — he understands and drives me straight to Charing Cross"”