IBBETSON, Julius Caesar

(b. 1759 Leeds, d. 1817 Masham)

English painter. His unusual Christian names were given to him because of his Caesarian birth. He specialized in fairly small landscapes with figures and animals. Benjamin West called him ‘the Berchem of England’. Ibbetson worked mainly in his native Yorkshire, but also for a time in London and the Lake District, and he visited Java (1789). He worked in watercolour as well as oil and also made etchings. In 1803 he published a treatise on painting. Like his friend Morland, Ibbetson is said to have been given to dissipation, but his work did not obviously suffer because of this as Morland’s did.

George Biggins' Ascent in Lunardi' Balloon

In addition to an ironic and self-critical attitude of British painting to modern technology, there was an objective documentation of technical innovations in the second half of the 18th century, as in Ibbetson’s painting.

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Landscape with Travellers

This painting depicts a landscape with travellers in a horse drawn carriage and figures conversing by a track. In the rural scene, the artist creates a fine contrast between the frenetic coachman, spurring his horses into a furious gallop and the leisurely exchange amongst the group of figures in the foreground of the work.

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Market Day, Masham, North Yorkshire

A market and manufacturing town near Ripon, close to the Yorkshire Dales, Masham was prominent in the local wool trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Ibbetson first visited the town in 1803, before settling there permanently with his family in 1804. He painted the town’s market on a number of occasions.

The handling and subtle colouring of the painting display a deep knowledge of earlier Dutch masters, such as Berchem and Wouwerman.

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