Paul Mellon's great appreciation for Thomas Rowlandson, the great chronicler of 18th and 19th century rural life in England, is amply apparent in the current show of Rowlandson's work at the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Virginia.

Organized by John Baskett, author and authority on Rowlandson, who became Mellon's first art curator, the exhibit includes Mellon's extensive collection that he began in 1961.

A trip to the National Sporting Library always provides the visitor with an opportunity to reach back in time with its seemingly endless collection of books, photographs and artwork depicting sporting life of yore, and that opportunity has never been more apparent than now as one gazes on the Rowlandson show.

The story of how the exhibit came to be is one of happy coincidences. Lorian Peralta-Ramos, a member of the Library Chairman's Council, was visiting London when she attended a lecture by Mr. Baskett. Speaking with him after the lecture she discovered that he would be visiting Virginia later in the month to visit with Beverly Carter, executrix to the late Paul Mellon, whose office happens to be next door to the Library.

Ms. Peralta-Ramos encouraged Baskett to stop in at the Library.

According to NSL Acting Director Rebecca Tomlinson, Baskett's visit was an inspiring one. "He walked into the Founder's Room and said, 'I can see Thomas Rowlandson on these walls.'" Of course, as they say, any piece of genius is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration so from that moment of insight forward much work had to be done to display the fragile, important pieces here.

Critical to the achievement of this feat was the collaboration of the Yale Center for British Art which houses the Paul Mellon Collection, home to the pieces now on display in Middleburg. Amy Meyer, director of the Yale Center, worked with Baskett and Tomlinson to facilitate the borrowing and hanging of pieces. According to Tomlinson, the staff at the Yale Center was enthusiastic about showing Paul Mellon's art in his home town.

The Yale Center's Paul Mellon Collection contains about 400 pieces, of which 36 Rowlandsons are now at the NSL. While that may not sound like many, the works on display here provide a nice introduction to Rowlandson's work. According to Mr. Baskett, "The selection was made with a view to showing Rowlandson as a social commentator rather than a cartoonist."

Rowlandson is most well known as a caricaturist. However, he was an accomplished visual journalist of his time, his pen and ink drawings, sometimes carefully, sometimes whimsically, chronicling scenes from urban as well as country life.

Gambling Debt

Rowlandson had shown early promise as a painter and studied at the Royal Academy and in Paris. Had he not plunged into gambling debt at a fairly young age he might have pursued life as a serious painter. Finding himself in debt, however, and fending off poverty he had to seek more dependable income. A friend suggested caricatures as a means of making a living, a line of work he pursued with early and continued success.

Born and raised in London, Rowlandson was raised by a French aunt. Her influence included many trips, for leisure and study, to France prior to the Napoleonic wars.

Rowlandson had great affection for the French and it shows in his kinder depictions of them than his fellow Englishmen (most of whom he depicts as rather rotund.)

Rowlandson lived in the city but he spent a great deal of time in the English countryside, visiting with friends at their country estates. This provided him with many opportunities to observe and finally to draw scenes of country life.

It is these drawings which will most likely amuse the foxhunters and equestrians among us. The various hunting scenes capture all the glory, beauty, fun and potential disaster (see "How to Twist Your Neck" for a humorous take on a not so funny foxhunting possibility) that we experience to this day out hunting.

From the drawings on display, one senses that Rowlandson was a romantic with a sense of humor, a great appreciator of beauty with a keen eye for detail. One can enjoy portraits of aristocrats, French and English hunting scenes, caricatures (see "A Worn Out Debaucher" for a hilarious example of the work for which Rowlandson is known) and perhaps best of all, drawings that reveal in intimate and affectionate detail daily life, capturing for the 21st century viewer moments which feel familiar, only better.

Paul Mellon's Rowlandson Collection Comes Home

A National Sporting Library, Yale and John Baskett Collaboration