The Sully Pavilion, Fontainebleau

This watercolour was painted by the young Edward John Poynter not long after his arrival in Paris in 1856. The Palace of Fontainebleau was a favourite sketching destination during his student years when he was part of a circle of artists including George du Maurier and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The Sully Pavilion, situated to the north-east of the main château, is viewed in this image across a rectangular reservoir which has since been covered over. The watercolour shows the influence of Poynter’s early teachers – his father, Ambrose Poynter, and Thomas Shotter Boys. Although now primarily remembered for his paintings of archaeological reconstructions of the ancient world, in the 1860s and 1870s, Poynter was an active exhibitor of landscape and portrait watercolours.