Winter Evening - Cows Going Home, by Daniel Alexander Williamson (1823-1903). c.1859. Oil on canvas; 12 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches (32.5 x 54.7 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Peter and Renate Nahum. [Click on this and the following image to enlarge them.]
This may be the painting that Williamson exhibited at the Liverpool Academy in 1859 entitled Cows Going Home. Christopher Newall has noted that Williamson often chose cows as subjects for his art, especially at this period, so this is likely to be one in his series of paintings of cattle on Peckham Common: "Williamson changed his style a number of times. Whilst living in London between the late 1840s and 1860, he made a number of paintings and drawings of cattle which are thought to have been set on Peckham Common. He returned to the subject of cattle on and off during his career" (118). In the nineteenth century, Peckham was a village southeast of London and a major stopping point for cattle drovers who were taking their livestock to the London markets. Holding pens had been built there so that the cattle could be safely secured while the drovers rested overnight in the local inns. Williamson's painting portrays a single drover herding cows and calves across the common at twilight. He gives the painting brilliant lighting effects and makes particularly effective use of the shadows cast by the cattle. A row of trees is seen in the background. If the date of 1859 is correct, this work shows that even as early as the late 1850s Williamson was already being influenced by Pre-Raphaelitism.
There is a watercolour study for this painting in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, that the gallery dates to 1859 and to which it has given the title of Milking Time, Peckham Common.
Milking Time, Peckham Common. c.1859. Watercolour on paper. 11 x 20 inches (28.8 x 51 cm). Collection: Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, accession no. WAG 1242. Image courtesy of Walker Art Gallery under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).
Allen Staley felt this watercolour recalled Constant Troyon's Oxon Going to Work: Morning of 1855, now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris (147). Troyon's paintings were shown in the "French Exhibitions" held annually at Ernest Gambart's gallery at 121 Pall Mall starting in 1854 (Maas 71). In 1859 Troyon had exhibited Cattle Driven to the Pond at the French Exhibition. Williamson therefore could have been familiar with this artist's work.
Bibliography
Maas, Jeremy. Gambart. Prince of the Victorian Art World. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1975.
Milking Time, Peckam Common. Liverpool Museums. Web. 16 August 2024.
Newall, Christopher. Pre-Raphaelites Beauty and Rebellion. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016.
Staley, Allen. The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Created 16 August 2024