Biographies: Collectors, Dealers, Family, Fellow Artists, Patrons

John Henderson (1764 - 1843)

Patrons, Fellow artists

John Henderson (1764–1843) studied law but did not practise, concentrating his energies on building up a substantial collection of prints and drawings, commissioning work from contemporary landscape artists, and working as an amateur artist in his own right. Henderson was a neighbour of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833) at the Adelphi, overlooking the Thames in London. He is recorded by the artist and diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) as being one of those who lent his fellow patron ‘their outlines’ for Monro’s young protégés, Girtin and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), to copy and realise as more finished watercolours (Farington, Diary, 1 December 1795). Specifically, ‘a Portfolio of outlines of Shipping & Boats’ that Henderson made at Dover in 1794 (see source image TG0803) provided the basis for a substantial group of watercolours by the two artists, as in the example of Dover Harbour: Small Boats by the Quay (TG0803) (Farington, Diary, 30 December 1794). Henderson himself commissioned more substantial works from both Turner and Girtin, and Girtin’s view of Weymouth (TG0911), may have been painted from the amateur’s own colour sketch (see source image TG0911). This displays not a little skill and given that Henderson made a number of copies of Girtin’s watercolours, including The Manor House, Richmond (see TG1062 figure 1), it is not surprising that some of the patron’s works have been wrongly attributed to the professional artist. These include a number that were mixed in with the Girtin drawings bequeathed or donated to the British Museum by his son, John Henderson II (1797–1878), such as Durham Cathedral (see TG0919 figure 1). The bulk of the works commissioned from Girtin took the form of watercolour copies of prints from the elder Henderson’s own collection, including groups after topographical engravings by contemporary British artists such as Thomas Hearne (1744–1817) (TG0867) and Thomas Malton the Younger (1748–1804) (TG0870). There are also groups of drawings after prints by earlier continental masters such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–78) (TG0886) and Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto) (1697–1768) (TG0899). These, it must be stressed, were not copied by Girtin as an exercise in the assimilation of the styles of admired models. Henderson’s commissions, like the works produced for Monro, were a relatively cheap and simple way for a patron to translate parts of his collection into something more substantial and, in the longer term, more valuable.

1795 - 1796

Dover Harbour: Small Boats by the Quay

TG0803

1795 - 1796

Dover Harbour: Small Boats by the Quay

TG0803

1796 - 1797

The Harbour at Weymouth

TG0911

1796 - 1797

The Harbour at Weymouth

TG0911

1797 - 1798

Richmond, Yorkshire: The Seventeenth-Century House Known as St Nicholas

TG1062

1796 - 1797

Durham Cathedral, from the South West

TG0919

(?) 1795

Lanercost Priory Church: An Interior View of the Ruins from the South Transept

TG0867

1795 - 1796

London: The Mansion House

TG0870

1797 - 1798

The Temple of Augustus at Pula in Istria

TG0886

1797 - 1798

Venice: The Grand Canal, Looking East from the Palazzo Flangini to San Marcuola

TG0899

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