Offered for sale by The Cotswold Auction Company at The Bingham Hall, Cirencester, Gloucestershire on Friday 23rd May 2008 @ 10am. Estimate: £4000 - £6000.

This magnificent watercolour depicting The Great Exhibition, Crystal Palace London is signed and dated c1851 (89cms x 68cms). It was painted by Louis Haghe who was a lithographer and watercolour artist by royal appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

Louis Haghe’s father and grandfather had practised as architects. Training in his teens in watercolour painting, he found work in the relatively new art of lithography when the first press was set up in Tournai. He visited England to find work, and settled there permanently in 1823.

Together with William Day (1797 - 1845), around 1830 he formed the partnership Day & Haghe, which became the most famous early Victorian firm of lithographic printing in London. Day and Haghe printed lithographs dealing with a wide range of subjects, such as hunting scenes, topographical views and genre depictions.

In 1838, Day and Haghe were appointed ‘Lithographers to the Queen’. After William’s death in 1845, the firm became known as ‘Day & Son’. They were pioneers in developing the medium of the lithograph printed in colours.

From the 1850’s Haghe concentrated more on his watercolours, and became president of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours from 1873 to 1884. Haghe’s artistic works were achieved in spite of a deformity in his right hand since birth, making this masterwork all the more extraordinary.

Auction info www.cotswoldauction.co.uk

Posted: 05|20|08 at 7:02 am. Filed under: UK News.