At Binsey, near Oxford by George Price Boyce (1826-1897). Dated September 1862. Watercolour & ink on paper. H 31.1 x W 53.7 cm. Collection: The Higgins Bedford. Accession no. P.188. Acquisition method purchased, 1958. Image credit: The Higgins Bedford. Image kindly released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
In his book, Pre-Raphaelite Landscape, Allen Staley writes of the "sense of intimacy" in many of the artist's works, and finds this even more noticeably here:
A mother and child are seated in the foreground; two guinea-hens scavenge in the grass before them; and a rustic fence and farm buildings close off the view. The foliage of a pair of trees fills the upper half of the composition, forming a screen of delicately drawn leaves across the surface of the picture. There are, of course, birds in the branches. [143]
Staley adds, "Screens of trees through which farm buildings may be seen appear in a number of other watercolours" (143). Pollarded trees aren't usually beautiful, but here again, they are evidence of the human touch, and actually do look very attractive with their tiny meticulously detailed (Pre-Raphaelite leaves, green heightened by yellow. The dove-cote in the background is further evidence of nature shaped, domesticated, and made appropriate to our sensibilities and pleasing to the eye. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Bibliography
At Binsey, near Oxford. Art UK. Web. 12 August 2024.
Staley, Allen. The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape. New Haven: Yale (for the Paul Mellon Centre), 2001.
Created 12 August 2024