The Valley of Rocks, Lynton, North Devon, Showing Lee Abbey, by William Henry Millais (1828-1899). 1857. Watercolour and gouache on paper. 13 3/8 x 79 7/8 inches (34 x 203 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Rupert Maas, Maas Gallery, London. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
This remarkable watercolour is unique in Millais's oeuvre showing a panoramic view of the right side of the Valley of Rocks, Exmoor, a dramatic area of coastline located about a half mile to the west of Lynton in North Devon. Christopher Newall has described the location depicted:
This notable geological feature, which seems to be a continuation of the ravine once occupied by the Lyn river before coastal and river erosion breached the cliffs that separate valley and sea, is marked by a line of sandstone outcrops or tors, with scree around their flanks, on either side of a dry valley bed. On the left side of the entrance to the valley is Castle Rock, whilst on the right, abutting the north flank of Exmoor on the landward side, is the Devils Cheesewring. The left side of the composition gives a view along the Devon coast, while at the centre is Lee Abbey, a Gothic-style country house built for Charles Frederick Bailey in about 1850, but incorporating an earlier manor house. Lynton and the surrounding landscape were becoming famous as beauty spots in the middle of years of the nineteenth century, and were increasingly visited by artists. [45]
For instance, George Price Boyce's On the West Lyn, North Devon was painted in 1858, while he executed The East Lynn at Middleham, North Devon a year later in 1859.
Closer view of Lee Abbey in the central portion of the panoramic work.
The Valley of Rocks was not the only work that W. H. Millais painted in this area, which seems to have been a favoured location for him. Other works by him from this area, dated 1865 and 1868, have appeared on the art market. This part of Exmoor was not easily accessible to artists until improved transportation links occurred in 1878.
When the painting was shown at the exhibition British Pictures at the Maas Gallery in 2009, its catalogue entry explained the importance of this location for painters:
The Pre-Raphaelite pursuit of truth was not confined to scientific inquiry; time was just as important in describing the uniqueness of a landscape. The area around Lynton was not a primeval Eden, but a much visited and carefully tended beauty spot. Charles Lyell described the Earth in his Principles of Geology as a "theatre of reiterated change," and alongside the geological pre-history of the landscape the Pre-Raphaelites attempted to communicate the more recent human history, as Millais has here with the buildings and the paths, and beyond that, a poetical dimension – both Millais and Boyce (who painted hereabouts a year later) probably knew Linton [sic] from lines that were to have been a joint project by Coleridge and Wordsworth: "The Wanderings of Cain," set in the Valley of the Rocks, written by Coleridge in 1797, unfinished and not published until 1828. [47]
Newall has explained the unique nature of this particular watercolour amongst Millais's paintings:
William Millais's Valley of Rocks exchanges Pre-Raphaelite proximity for breadth of vision. Extraordinary for its format (more than six times wider than it is high) and unlike any other work by William Millais, or indeed by any other Pre-Raphaelite landscapist, the watercolour may have originally been intended to be displayed as a panorama, perhaps bent around to form a half-circle. By this means, the points along the coast shown towards the wings of the composition, which seem to turn away from the vantage-point, might appear to be placed in an approximate east-west alignment (as they are in reality). The painter may have used some kind of optical device to achieve a panoramic view showing the coastal landscape with an angle of vision of very close to 180 degrees, or perhaps he had been looking at examples of panoramic photography, for which there was a vogue in the 1850s. [45]
James Robertson and his brother-in-law Felice Beato, for instance, were noted for the panoramic photographic views they made of Constantinople in 1857.
Bibliography
British Pictures. London: The Mass Gallery, 2009, cat. 43, 46.
Pauli, Lori. 19th–Century British Photographs. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2011, cat.46, 108-09.
Staley, Allen and Christopher Newall. Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Truth to Nature. London: Tate Publishing, 2004, cat. 13, 45.
Created 12 November 2024