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Attack by American Indians: Act II, Scene 1, from the play "Strange Tale of the Castaway: A Western Kabuki," Adachi Ginkō
Large in scale and intended for sale, both watercolors belong to a heady period following the successful inaugural exhibition held in London in April 1805 by the Society of Painters in Water-Colours-- an event that did much to accelerate public appreciation of watercolors and inspired artists such as David Cox and Cornelius Varley to produce large, ambitious pieces that rivaled oil paintings. By emphasizing color and tone over drawing, both artists responded to the revolution in watercolor technique that was sparked largely by their contemporaries, M. W Turner (1775- 1851) and his short-lived rival Thomas Girtin (1775-1802). While both watercolors depict the Thames, their settings, atmospheric effects, and technical devices are considerably different and express the range of influences and innovations that played such an important role in the British watercolor movement and, thereby, in the history of British art.
The earlier of the two works is by Birmingham-born David Cox and dates from his first stay in London (1804-14), when he supported himself as a drawing teacher and published the first of his drawing manuals, Treatise on Landscape Painting. Better known for his later, bolder, and more roughly executed watercolors of Welsh moors and mountains, Cox's early, finished, and generally tranquil works convey his preference for views with a low, flat horizon and dominant, breezy sky rendered with broadly brushed strokes of transparent watercolor. Said to have expressed a distaste for "portraits of places," Cox evokes but does not delineate the urban landmarks of Lambeth Palace (on the left), Westminster Abbey, and the old Houses of Parliament. He captures the essence of the buildings and Westminster Bridge with the same economy as he does the reflections in the water, the oarsman's blue-and-white striped shirt, and the green trees around Lambeth Palace.
In this balance of human presence and encompassing nature, Cox's watercolor reflects the pantheistic spirit of the celebrated poem by his contemporary William Wordsworth, "Upon Westminster Bridge" (1802), which describes a rare, unpolluted morning when "Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie/Open unto the fields and to the sky; /All bright and glittering in the smokeless air."
Cornelius Varley, also an important exponent of early-nineteenth-century British naturalism, was until recently more celebrated for his numerous scientific inventions, particularly in the field of optics including a type of portable camera lucida that he patented in 1811 as the Patent Graphic Telescope. By means of a simple inverting telescope and a series of reflecting mirrors, this instrument projected on to paper a reduced image that could be traced and colored by hand-thus allowing the artist to render his "on the spot" observations as accurately as possible. Varley used this device for many of his drawings and more finished watercolors, often inscribing them "PGT." Although this watercolor is not so inscribed, the unfinished foreground together with the tightly delineated buildings in the middle ground, the tiny boats on the river, and the slight distortion of the perspective all seem to be indications of Varley's invention at work.
One of Varley's largest known watercolors, this view of the Thames from Richmond Park, a popular tourist and Sunday-outing site near London, remains virtually unchanged since Varley's time. While Cox's watercolor owes much to the shimmering London vistas of the eighteenth-century Venetian painter Canaletto,Varley here is indebt ed to the pastoral landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, apparent in such details as the nude reclining couple and the stylized rays of the rising sun. He also has been influenced by Turner's views of Richmond, both in the imposition of a classicizing composition on a British setting and in his choice of the "sad and fuscous colours, as black or brown or deep purple" that were advocated by Edmund Burke in his influential work On the Sublime and the Beautiful (1774), as a way of depicting the sublime. By endowing his scientifically observed landscape with such conceptual overtones, Varley bestows a visionary complexity on his view of Richmond Hill that contrasts with the topographic tranquillity of Cox's view of Westminster Bridge.
The earlier of the two works is by Birmingham-born David Cox and dates from his first stay in London (1804-14), when he supported himself as a drawing teacher and published the first of his drawing manuals, Treatise on Landscape Painting. Better known for his later, bolder, and more roughly executed watercolors of Welsh moors and mountains, Cox's early, finished, and generally tranquil works convey his preference for views with a low, flat horizon and dominant, breezy sky rendered with broadly brushed strokes of transparent watercolor. Said to have expressed a distaste for "portraits of places," Cox evokes but does not delineate the urban landmarks of Lambeth Palace (on the left), Westminster Abbey, and the old Houses of Parliament. He captures the essence of the buildings and Westminster Bridge with the same economy as he does the reflections in the water, the oarsman's blue-and-white striped shirt, and the green trees around Lambeth Palace.
In this balance of human presence and encompassing nature, Cox's watercolor reflects the pantheistic spirit of the celebrated poem by his contemporary William Wordsworth, "Upon Westminster Bridge" (1802), which describes a rare, unpolluted morning when "Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie/Open unto the fields and to the sky; /All bright and glittering in the smokeless air."
Cornelius Varley, also an important exponent of early-nineteenth-century British naturalism, was until recently more celebrated for his numerous scientific inventions, particularly in the field of optics including a type of portable camera lucida that he patented in 1811 as the Patent Graphic Telescope. By means of a simple inverting telescope and a series of reflecting mirrors, this instrument projected on to paper a reduced image that could be traced and colored by hand-thus allowing the artist to render his "on the spot" observations as accurately as possible. Varley used this device for many of his drawings and more finished watercolors, often inscribing them "PGT." Although this watercolor is not so inscribed, the unfinished foreground together with the tightly delineated buildings in the middle ground, the tiny boats on the river, and the slight distortion of the perspective all seem to be indications of Varley's invention at work.
One of Varley's largest known watercolors, this view of the Thames from Richmond Park, a popular tourist and Sunday-outing site near London, remains virtually unchanged since Varley's time. While Cox's watercolor owes much to the shimmering London vistas of the eighteenth-century Venetian painter Canaletto,Varley here is indebt ed to the pastoral landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, apparent in such details as the nude reclining couple and the stylized rays of the rising sun. He also has been influenced by Turner's views of Richmond, both in the imposition of a classicizing composition on a British setting and in his choice of the "sad and fuscous colours, as black or brown or deep purple" that were advocated by Edmund Burke in his influential work On the Sublime and the Beautiful (1774), as a way of depicting the sublime. By endowing his scientifically observed landscape with such conceptual overtones, Varley bestows a visionary complexity on his view of Richmond Hill that contrasts with the topographic tranquillity of Cox's view of Westminster Bridge.
