The Coot's Haunt, by Daniel Alexander Williamson (1823-1903). 1863-64. Oil on board. 11 x 14 ¾ inches (28 x 36.2 cm). The Robertson Collection, Orkney. Image courtesy of Peter and Renate Nahum.
Williamson started this work in the autumn of 1863 and completed it in 1864 following his move to the village of Broughton-in-Furness in the Lake District of Cumbria. He exhibited it at the Liverpool Academy in 1864. It was thus painted during that short period of time in the early 1860s when he painted his most important Pre-Raphaelite landscapes. Although the exact location of the site is unknown, Christopher Newall speculates it might "represent a mere in the southern lakes" (Pre-Raphaelite Vision, 230). Peter Nahum felt this work "is comparable in quality to Spring: Arnside Knot and Coniston Range of Hills, 1863, (Walker Art Gallery Liverpool). In both of these works the artist has sought to capture the exact mood of the landscape. This vision of nature is made all the more intense by the artist's use of Pre-Raphaelite detail combined with strong bright colours which were applied in thin glazes to a white ground. This was the technique developed by the Pre-Raphaelites to give the colours a much greater luminosity and intensity."
Newall, however, felt this was more of a transitional work in Williamson's oeuvre away from Pre-Raphaelite truth to nature towards a more poetic interpretation of the countryside:
The painting is a most poignant evocation of an autumnal evening – points of bright colour in the reddened foliage, as well as the greys of the limestone boulders at the waters edge and in the meadow beyond, still show in half-light of dusk – and the spectator is invited to imagine the sound of the bird as it lands on the tranquil surface of water before retiring to its roost. By conjuring such impressions, which prompt memories of places visited and which operate in a poetic and loosely atmospheric way, Williamson was moving forward to a type of landscape painting dependent on evocation rather than literal documentation. [Pre-Raphaelite Vision, 230]
Bibliography
Marillier, Harry C. The Liverpool School of Painters. London: John Murray, 1904.
Nahum, Peter at the Leicester Galleries website. https://www.leicestergalleries.com/browse-artwork-detail/MTcyNDE=
Newall, Christopher. Pre-Raphaelites: Beauty and Rebellion. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016. 97.
Staley, Allen and Christopher Newall. Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature. London: Tate Publishing, 2004, cat. 138.
Created 16 August 2024