Grand Canal, Venice

Despite pressure from his father, Hercules Brabazon Sharpe followed his passion for art and the warmth of the Mediterranean. He escaped daddy’s thumb in 1847, when an inheritance gave him financial independence along with the requirement that he assume his mother’s family name, hence Hercules Brabazon Brabazon. Brabazon devoted himself to watercolor. Largely self-taught, he studied the Old Masters and the work of his older contemporaries, especially J.M.W. Turner, whose work appears in this room. Considering himself an amateur, he refrained from exhibiting or selling his work until his 70th year when friends finally persuaded him to do so. Perhaps Mia bought too soon, for two years after our 1924 purchase, financial reversals caused his family to flood the market with 3, 199 Brabazon watercolors.