Windsor from Eton by Augustus Wall Callcott (1779-1844), 1808-9. Oil on canvas. 29 1/2 x 44 1/4 inches (74.9 x 112.4 cm). Collection: Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art. Accession Number: B2001.2.235. Identified as being in the public domain, and downloaded via Art UK/span> by Jacqueline Banerjee, who also added the text.
This belongs to a time when Callcott was interested in the way "blnd suffusing light" could be captured in "finely modulated tones" (Brown 32). Not everyone will respond to the muted colours of this panoramic view, but they do emphasise the scale of the distant castle, its rural setting, and the drama of the cloudy sky. For once, we have some information about the appeal of the painting to it original purchaser. The photograph of it on the Yale Center website is accompanied by some heart-warming information about what "the grey mass of Windsor Castle towering in the distance" evoked for him:
Commentary by Michael Warner
Paul Mellon was christened in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and spent some of the happiest days of his childhood on summer visits to Windsor: "From those distant summers I remember huge dark trees in rolling parks, herds of small friendly deer, flotillas of white swans on the Thames, dappled tan cows in soft green fields, the grey mass of Windsor Castle towering in the distance against a background of huge golden summer clouds; soldiers in scarlet and bright metal, drums and bugles, troops of grey horses; laughing ladies in white with gay parasols, men in impeccable white flannels and striped blazers, and always behind them and behind everything the grass was green, green, green...There seemed to be a tranquility in those days that was never again to be found, and a quietness as detached from life as the memory itself." He hung the grey mass of Windsor Castle towering in the distance's painting in a place of high honor, over the fireplace in his study in New York. [18]
Links to Related Material
- Detail of the fisherman beside the blasted tree in the right-hand corner
- The Castle, from the Eton play fields, based on a sketch bySandhurst Military Academy drawing-master W. Alfred Delamotte
- Windsor Castle by Thomas Creswick (1840)
- Windsor, by E. W. Haslehurst
- Early twentieth-century view of the castle from the river
- Windsor Castle from the Long Walk, Victorian additions and alterations by Sir Jeffry Wyattville< (modern photograph)
Bibliography
Brown, David Blayney. Augustus Wall Callcott. London: Tate Gallery, 1981.
Warner, Malcolm and John Baskett. The Paul Mellon Bequest: Treasures of a Lifetime. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2001.
Windsor from Eton. Art Uk. Web. 14 April 2023.
Created 14 April 2023