A Lady of Leisure in the Alps
CROMPTON, Henrietta Matilda.
Sketchbook of a tour through southern Germany and Switzerland. July, 1836.
Oblong folio, 52 pen or pen-and-wash sketches (mostly in blue and brown) and seventeen pencil sketches, including eight double-page panoramas, most captioned in pencil or pen, with some notes on the versos; some scattered foxing, the last sketch partly laid down on the rear endpaper, folding and slightly damaged, some slight wear to edges, else very good; bound in contemporary half roan with marbled paper sides, manuscript paper label to front cover; sides rubbed, neatly rebacked, remains of a leather pen/brush holder to lower edge, woodcut royal arms (possibly the head of a passport) pasted on to front endpapers, later autograph letter to Crompton from Harriet Eyre (thanking her for the loan of the album) tipped in.
An extremely attractive plein-air sketchbook covering a summer tour from Koblenz to Geneva in 1836, with many fine views of mountains and glaciers.
An unmarried women in her forties, Crompton was travelling with her younger brother and sister. The first part of their route followed the Rhine, taking in Wiesbaden (where they ‘drank the Kochbrunnen’), Langenschwalbach, Nonnenwerth (‘we slept in the nunnery on the island, cold and damp’), Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Baden Baden, and the Black Forest, with several views devoted to each. The album then jumps to Switzerland, with a panorama of the Rhine Falls, and scenes of Zurich, the wooden bridge over Lake Lucerne, William Tell’s chapel, Amsteg, Hospental (‘4000 F. high’ in the St Gotthard pass), and Mt Rigi (then becoming Europe’s premier mountain destination), with the observation tower at the summit and views to Zug and Lucerne. From there Crompton and her party progressed to Brienz and Thun, sketching Niesen from the steam packet, and there are spectacular views of Schwarzmönach, Breithorn and Jungfrau, of the valley of Grindelwald with Jungfrau behind, and of the Grindelwald glaciers. On 2 August she crossed the Wengenalp (‘lovely day’, with views to Eiger), and there are sketches of the glacier at Rosen[laui], Wetterhorn, the Reichenbach falls, Neuchatel, Fribourg (a fine panorama of the bridge), Lausanne, Geneva, the famous Mer der Glace glacier under Mt Blanc (another panorama), and Chillon on the shore of Lake Geneva. Throughout, the names of geographic features are provided, and towards the end Crompton records an ascent of Monte Rosa by Edward Herries, who was secretary to the British legation at Bern. Some scenes are present in a second looser version, probably executed en route and later worked up.
The Cromptons, of Esholt Hall, near Bradford, West Yorkshire, and 72 Micklegate, York, were a wealthy banking family, and upon the death of their father, Joshua Crompton (d. 1832), Henrietta Matilda (1793–1881) and her eight siblings inherited the considerable sum of £11,000 each, which Henrietta, who never married, employed in a comfortable life in York enlivened by excursions and foreign travel. She had received a strong education, and her talents in draughtsmanship saw her study with Copley Fielding and David Cox among others. As an inscription at the front notes, on this tour she was accompanied by her youngest sister Caroline Rachel (later O’Reilly, 1798–1884), and her brother Robert (1805–1840), of Azerley Hall, a soldier in the 15th Hussars. She later, in 1878, gave the album to her sister Caroline.
See Allen, Letters & papers of Henrietta Matilda Crompton & her family, a list with extracts, & The art of Henrietta Matilda Crompton, 1994. Other examples of her sketchbooks can be found at the Yale Center for British Art and at the North Yorkshire Archives, and a view of Windsor is in the Royal Collection.