Crossing the Bridge

This large, finished watercolor joins nine drawings in the collection by this English romantic artist; together, these sheets document virtually every phase of his long career. After a celebrated period at Shoreham, where he produced visionary landscapes, the artist traveled to Italy in 1837 before returning to live in London. There he developed a mastery of light and color, which he excercised in a body of idyllic, closely observed landscapes executed in watercolors. The present sheet dates to 1847, immediately following the artist's travels through the English countryside in Kent and Buckinghamshire. It depicts with a certain nostalgia a woman with child in hand, followed by a herd of goats, crossing an old stone bridge across a stream toward a mill.