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Description: | Oil on canvas. A herder on horseback drives two cows and a group of sheep along a country lane. Beyond him is a picturesque scene of a river with a waterfall, a castle and distant hills.
This view of an imaginary landscape demonstrates the influence of Italian classical landscape painting. Works of this genre often featured ruins and rivers, evoking the Italian countryside or campagna. The vogue for such paintings started with the introduction of landscapes by artists such as, the French painter active in Italy, Claude Lorrain to England in the 17th and 18th centuries. Landscape paintings were purchased in Rome by wealthy Englishmen visiting as part of their Grand Tour and brought back as souvenirs. Abraham Pether was one of numerous British artists who sought to emulate this style of painting for middle class collectors without the means to buy works by Lorrain, but who aspired to his style of art.
This is one of numerous imaginary views by Pether showing an invented castle within a waterside setting (although most other examples are lit by moonlight). Despite the many variations on this theme by Pether in existence, he is not known to have painted any of his imaginary compositions more than once. | Subjects: | tree waterfall cow castle river bank herdsman man stone/rock landscape C20th river | Temporal: | 1806 | Source: | Government Art Collection | Creator: | Abraham Pether | Identifier: | http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk/work.aspx?... | Go to resource |
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