Oil on panel, Landscape with cottage, artist unknown, British school, c.1800

A thatched-cottage, surrounded by woodland, with a figure, in red, crossing a small-wooden bridge and another cottage, barely visible in the shadows, on the right. A pond with lily pads and reeds in the foreground.

Bequeathed by Rev. Alexander Dyce

Bequeathed by Rev. Alexander Dyce

[Not in Ron Parkinson]
The Reverend Alexander Dyce :
South Kensington Museum Art Handbooks. The Dyce and Forster Collections. With Engravings and Facsimiles. Published for the Committee of Council on Education by Chapman and Hall, Limited, 193, Piccadilly, London. 1880. Chapter I. Biographical Sketch of Mr. Dyce. pp.1-12, including 'Portrait of Mr. Dyce' illustrated opposite p.1.

Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education, South Kensington Museum.A Catalogue of the Paintings, Miniatures, Drawings... Bequeathed by The Reverend Alexander Dyce. London, 1874. A 'Note' on page v comments, 'This catalogue refers to the Art portion of the Collection bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum by the Reverend Alexander Dyce, the well-known Shakespearian scholar, who died May 15, 1869'. The Catalogue. Paintings, Miniatures, &c. by Samuel Redgrave notes of the 'Oil Paintings', 'The strength of Mr. Dyce's valuable bequest to Department of Science and Art does not lie in [this] portion ... which is in its nature of a very miscellaneous character. The collection was made apparently as objects offered themselves, and without any special design.' Dyce's main interest was in literary subjects, and this is reflected in many of the paintings he bequeathed to the V&A.

This turn-of-the-19th-century oil on panel depicts a remote cottage deep within a wooded glade. The cottage merges with its natural surroundings of moss and leaves and is both enclosed within its own world and cut off from the world outside. The approaching figure with red waistcoat adds a splash of colour and frisson of humanity to this dark, woodland scene.

The painting’s cottage motif was considered unseemly in 17th and early-18th century British landscape painting. It harks back to Gainsborough’s celebrated ‘Cottage Door’ scenes of the 1770s and 80s in which an isolated cottage is depicted deep within a wood and female figures are shown congregating outside the cottage door awaiting the labouring-husband’s return. Whilst there are no peasants gathered outside the cottage in the V&A work, the open doors suggest occupancy within and the approaching figure recalls the returning labourer in Gainsborough’s cottage scenes. The cottage walls and thatched-covered roof, with encroaching moss and vegetation, are also resonant of the cottages of George Morland (1763-1804) with their moss-covered roofs and slightly decaying walls. Ultimately the V&A work draws upon the rich tradition of Dutch landscape painting which popularised exterior and interior views of cottages. It was suggested in 1910 that its style has an affinity with the work of the Dutch artist, Roelof van Vries (1630/1 – after 1681), although the painting was never attributed to him (see Departmental file).

We are supposed to assume that this is a scene of the painter’s imagination and fantasy and not a real scene. It has been suggested by John Barrell in his seminal work that Gainsborough’s ‘cottage-door’ scenes and the tradition they spawned, embody, although not consciously, political notions of how the poor ‘should behave’ (Barrell, John, The dark side of the landscape: the rural poor in English painting 1730-1840, Cambridge/New York 1980). He argues that such scenes suggest a fantasy of how the polite classes wished to see the rural poor; as remote and engaged in retired domesticity as opposed to the collective activities of drunkenness and bawdy gossip. Here, the open doors of the cottage indicate occupancy but also the anticipated return of the labourer, depicted on the right, presumably after a hard day’s work.

The painting is also reminiscent of J.T. Smith’s small book of etchings of cottages, with its brief essay on the sub-genre of landscape which he called ‘cottage scenery’ (Smith, J.T., Remarks on rural scenery; with twenty etchings of cottages, from nature; and some observations and precepts relative to the picturesque, London 1797). In this work, Smith identifies ‘neat’ and ‘neglected’ cottages citing ‘the neglected fast-ruinating cottage’ as more appealing to the artist. The cottage in the V&A work, recalls Smith’s picturesque cottages nestled amongst overgrown vegetation, whilst appearing well-cared for, without broken window panes and chimney-tops.

The painting’s cottage theme also echoes contemporary pastoral literature which explores the fantasy of rural cottage idylls. In his poem Deserted Village (1770), for example, Oliver Goldsmith reflects on a fading way of life embodied by, “The shelter’d cot [cottage]…” The poet, William Cowper, shares this nostalgia in The Task (1785), in which he muses on the pastoral dream of rural retirement to a cottage which he passed in his rural walks and named ‘the peasant’s nest’.

This turn-of-the-19th-century oil on panel depicts a remote cottage deep within a wooded glade with a figure approaching from the right. The painting harks back to Gainsborough’s ‘cottage-door scenes’ of the 1770s and 80s in which an isolated cottage is depicted deep within a wood and female figures are shown congregating outside the cottage door awaiting the labouring-husband’s return. The overgrown, picturesque decay of the cottage in this painting, recalls the cottages of George Morland (1763-1804), however, the cottage motif in general draws upon the rich tradition of Dutch landscape painting which popularised exterior and interior views of cottages. The work is a product of the artist’s imagination and perhaps reflects, albeit subconsciously, a fantasy of how the polite classes wished to see the rural poor; as remote and engaged in retired domesticity.

DYCE.59