The Woodland Stream, by John William North (1892. Watercolour on paper; 153/4 x 213/4 in. (40 x 55 cm); Private collection.
North by constant experimentation perfected a watercolour technique that eliminated the use of gouache and at the same time gave pure colour greater depth and range of tone. He particularly employed this technique in his late landscapes where figures were virtually eliminated. The contemporary critic Harry Quilter, while agreeing that North should be included in the idyllists, had some reservations, stating:
North is essentially a landscape painter, and so hardly comparable, and his painting of late years is hardly to be classed in the same category – it has lost the simplicity and feeling of earlier days. This change dates back to the years of this artist's stay in Algiers; the luxuriant confused loveliness of the gardens and woodlands there, which the painter rendered with great fidelity and beauty, influenced and influences his later work in England, takes away the native character, the sturdiness and breadth of the landscape…. Let me only say further in this connection that, when every allowance is made for this or that imperfection, Mr. North's work is always fine and genuinely artistic; that it is inspired by a sense of beauty at once subtle, delicate, and intense; that almost beyond any living English landscape painter is he successful in suffusing the scenes of his pictures with an atmosphere of personal feeling. Some special things, too, he has done better than they have ever been done before, and one of these is what may be called the mystery of vegetation: its wildness, delicacy, and strangeness. [5-6]
H. L. Mallalieu had these comments about North's style of landscape painting: "His style could be called a mixture between those of Corot and the Pre-Raphaelites. His foregrounds in particular, with their massed vegetation, are full of detail while the backgrounds are often hazy and atmospheric. Foliage and vegetation were his forte, and both skies and figures gave him trouble. His colour is generally subdued, but on occasion it can be very bright and very successfully so" (192).
These comments by both Quilter and Mallalieu apply well to this watercolour by North from 1892. From the start of his career, and right up until his death, North always worked direct from nature en plein air. In later life, when his eyesight weakened he preferred to paint first thing in the morning when his vision was best for painting. The Woodland Stream is characteristic of North's late style showing the landscape enveloped in a hazy atmosphere. A leafless tree dominates the foreground situated on the banks of the woodland stream. The rest of the foreground is a mass of fallen tree trunks and tangled vegetation. The midground and background consists of trees on a hillside enveloped in fog and a grey cloudless sky. Here North's focus is on creating atmosphere in his landscape and not the "truth to nature" precision of detail that was the intention of earlier Pre-Raphaelite landscape painters
Bibliography
Mallalieu H. L. The Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists up to 1920. Woodbridge: The Antique Collector's Club, 1976.
Quilter, Harry. "A Group of idyllists." A Catalogue of Pictures and Sketches by George Mason, A.R.A. and George Pinwell, A.R.W.S., exhibition at the Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham (March 1895).
Created 22 May 2023