White Pike, by Daniel Alexander Williamson (1823-1903). 1879. Watercolour on paper. 14 1/2 x 21 inches (36.2 x 53.3 cm). Collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, accession no. WAG 3261. Image courtesy of the Walker Art Gallery under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).
White Pike is a mountain in the Furness Fells of Lancashire in the Lake District. It is the southwesterly subsidiary top on Walna Scar. The mountain dominates the right midground of this painting. In the foreground is a flock of sheep grazing on a meadow with a row of barren trees seen behind them. A cloudy sky fills the top half of the watercolour contributing to the mood portrayed of a cold wintry day. Although this work is obviously not influenced by Pre-Raphaelitism, Harry Marillier noted the importance of Williamson's early Pre-Raphaelite sketches on his later development: "Williamson himself thought very highly of the educational value of these early minute studies, and attributed to them the knowledge which enabled him in after life to become an impressionist, and to treat nature in a broad and free style…. His watercolours of the period from about 1870 onwards are in a broad, simple, poetic style, with wonderful truth of local colour" (238-39).
Christopher Newall considered this a work of British Impressionism:
The watercolours he painted in the late 1870s, such as White Pike, represent an instinctive and highly individual assimilation of the principles of impressionism. Marillier noted Williamson's "masterly studies of woodland or open country, with cattle and other natural features handled in the broad manner that he said was warranted by his previous minute observation." In his insistence that breadth and freedom of handling were only justifiable as the outcome of a detailed study of nature, Williamson shared the outlook of J. W. North and J. W. Inchbold. [151]
The Walker Art Gallery owns another watercolour entitled White Pike, Broughton Moor (WAG 1209) that shows the mountain from a different viewpoint.
Bibliography
Marillier, Harry C.: The Liverpool School of Painters. London: John Murray, 1904, 239.
White Pike. Liverpool Museums.. Web. 16 August 2024.
Wilcox, Scott and Christopher Newall. Victorian Landscape Waterrcolours. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1992, cat. 87.
Created 16 August 2024