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View of Kensington Gardens, London

image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art | CC0 1.0

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Date

1812

Artist

John Linnell, the elder (1792-1882)

Collection

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Description

Compact, luminous, and intense, this unkempt view of Kensington Gardens is deliberately unidealized. Beneath dense clouds and distant trees, two wooden poles and a shed with a tiled roof punctuate a raw, sloping patch of earth. Just twenty years old, Linnell had recently converted to a nonconformist Protestant sect, acquired a camera obscura, and, influenced by William Paley’s Natural Theology, sought direct proof of God’s creation in landscape. The meticulous representation of nature became a moral imperative. To achieve it Linnell developed a distinctive technique using small touches of pure color that anticipated the work of Samuel Palmer and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The artist probably added the identifying annotation at the bottom of the sheet at a later date.

Image Licence

CC0 1.0

Image Credit

image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Location

Kensington Gardens, London, England

Country

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Fields
Forests
Gardens

Category

Landscapes & Seascapes

Glossary
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© 2024 Watercolour World | Technology by The Museum Platform

© 2024 Watercolour World | Technology by The Museum Platform