The Wood Gatherers. 1869. Watercolour and gouache on paper. 15 15/16 x 22 3/16 inches (40.5 x 56.3 cm). Cleveland Museum of Art, accession no. 2013.239. Open Access image. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
The Wood Gatherers shows three weary impoverished female farm workers trudging up the slope of a hill. One young woman drags tree branches in her left hand that she has recently cut down to make faggots. The two other young women precede her, one helping support the other during their climb. The landscape depicted is the Somerset hills in early spring with the grass to the lower left being dotted with wild flowers. The horizon is high and the sky is a dull grey colour. North became an advocate for social justice for the agricultural working class during the many years he spent in rural Somerset and he campaigned for decent rural sanitation and social housing (Lemonedes 116).
North exhibited this watercolour at his debut at the Royal Academy in 1869 where he exhibited four watercolours in total. The Art Journal commented on his dislike of the colour in North's four contributions that year: "J. W. North, another favourite in the Dudley Gallery, will also have to contend against a violence in colour, which does outrage to nature" (201). A critic for The Times was more complimentary, considering North's works to take first place amongst the watercolour exhibitors: "Among less-known English contributors to the watercolour room the first place has been fairly won by J. W. North, whose four drawings – The Orphans (528), a shepherd giving milk to two lambs which have lost their ewe; A Sunny Day in the Field (536), women hoeing potatoes; The Quantocks (540), a landscape study in that picturesque Somersetshire range with a cart loading dead fern; and The Wood-gatherers, girls dragging fallen branches for fagoting up a steep hillside, are all distinguished by very rare qualities. In the first place, Mr. North can paint green under sunlight. Then he has a feeling of the grace and beauty that lies in common, sometimes even in the commonest, things and people" (4). In The Wood Gatherers in particular North appears to have been influenced by the works of G. H. Mason and Fred Walker, the two leaders of the Idyllic School.
Bibliography
Esposito, Donato. Frederick Walker and the Idyllists. London, 2017. Chapter 4, 97.
"Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Times (18 June 1869): 4.
Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. London: D. Giles Ltd., 2013. 116-117.
"The Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series VIII (1 July 1869): 197-204.
Created 21 May 2023