Barking Timber in Wychwood Forest, Oxfordshire
Joshua Cristall British
Not on view
Cristall’s considerable achievements as a watercolorist were largely forgotten after his death until he was rediscovered in 1950 by a leading art historian, who affirmed his significant stylistic influence on John Sell Cotman. A focus on the human figure sets the artist apart from watercolorist contemporaries, and this example demonstrates an abiding interest in themes of rural work. He encountered these bark workers in Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire and shows them stripping bark from felled oaks to produce a product needed to tan leather. While Cristall was aware of precedents in the work of Thomas Gainsborough and George Morland, he gives the comely young woman at the center of this composition a new nobility and avoids sentimentality, or any sense of narrative.
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