Oil on canvas, 'Thirlmere, Cumberland', James Baker Pyne, 1867

Landscape showing a lake between two hills. On the Hill to the right sits a family group including a woman sketching.

Bequeathed by Joshua Dixon

Bequeathed by Joshua Dixon, 1886. Originally bequeathed to 'the Bethnal Green branch of the South Kensington Museum' (extract from will on registered file).

Romanticism in the visual arts was on occasion expressed through size: either in tiny images such as the intricate fairy world of Richard Dadd and Noel Paton, or in very large paintings which implied that the magnitude of the subject and the artist's conception of it could not be contained within the confines of a frame of normal size. Pyne here increases our sense of vast scale not by physically expanding his canvas but by his compositional structure. The extent of the view seems limitless, into the distance as well as to both left and right, which well suits the subject: Cumberland is the north-westernmost county in England, adjoining the Scottish border, and renowned for its spectacular scenery, in the form of the Lakes and the Cumbrian Mountains. Pyne was a keen traveller, at home and abroad, and published two volumes of views in the Lake District in the 1850s. The rarified atmosphere, the silvery light filtering through the mists, appealed as much to Romantic sensibilities in the nineteenth century as it had to the seekers after the 'Picturesque' in the previous century. Pyne indicates the area's attraction for artists, amateur as well as professional, by including the family in the ferns on the right, the woman with her paintbox and drawing board contemplating the magnificent view.

Romanticism in the visual arts often sought to imply that the magnitude of the subject and the artist's conception of it could not be contained within the confines of a frame of normal size. Pyne here increases our sense of vast scale not by physically expanding his canvas but by his compositional structure. The extent of the view seems limitless, into the distance as well as to both left and right, which well suits the subject: Cumberland is the north-westernmost county in England, adjoining the Scottish border, and renowned for its spectacular scenery, in the form of the Lakes and the Cumbrian Mountains. Pyne was a keen traveller, at home and abroad, and published two volumes of views in the Lake District in the 1850s. The rarified atmosphere, the silvery light filtering through the mists, appealed as much to Romantic sensibilities in the nineteenth century as it had to the seekers after the 'Picturesque' in the previous century. Pyne indicates the area's attraction for artists, amateur as well as professional, by including the family in the ferns on the right, the woman with her paintbox and drawing board contemplating the magnificent view.

1020-1886