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View on Mousehold Heath, Near Norwich

Oil Painting
ca. 1812 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Crome, John (artist)
Place of origin
Great Britain (painted)

John Crome was a leading painter of naturalistic landscapes. He was also a founder of the Norwich school of painting. He believed in 'one grand plan of light and shade'. 'Trifles in Nature must be overlooked,' he said, 'that we may have our feelings raised by seeing the whole picture at a glance'.

Object details

Categories
Paintings
Landscapes
Object type
Oil painting
TitleView on Mousehold Heath, Near Norwich (popular title)
Materials and techniques
oil on canvas
Oil Paint
Canvas
Oil Painting
Brief description
Oil painting, 'View on Mousehold Heath, near Norwich', John Crome, ca. 1812
Physical description
Crome shows us a shepherd boy on a hillock of the heath silhouetted against the sky with his dog and his sheep below him. The vastness of the heath is glimpsed through a crack in the low lying ground on the right. Such a mundane subject is Dutch in inspiration but the colours are clear and bright and painted in broad bands of colour that suggests the influence of Richard Wilson.
Dimensions
  • Object height: 545mm
  • Object width: 812mm
  • Frame height: 860mm
  • Frame width: 1125mm
  • Frame depth: 100mm
Dimensions taken from Summary catalogue of British Paintings, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973.
Style
British School
Object history
Purchased, 1879
Bought (Anderdon Collection), sale Christie's, May 1879, along with four other oil paintings; one also by Crome museum number (236-1879), by George Morland (museum numbers 234-1879 and 235-1879) and Richard Heighway (233-1879). James Hughes Anderdon was a collector of paintings, engravings and autograph letters. In 1875 he presented to the Royal Academy an annotated set of Royal Academy catalogues for the Annual Summer Exhibitions from 1769 to 1850.
Subjects depicted
Landscape
Dog (Animal)
Shepherd
England, Norfolk, Mousehold Heath
Sheep
Summary
John Crome was a leading painter of naturalistic landscapes. He was also a founder of the Norwich school of painting. He believed in 'one grand plan of light and shade'. 'Trifles in Nature must be overlooked,' he said, 'that we may have our feelings raised by seeing the whole picture at a glance'.
Bibliographic references
  • 100 Great Paintings in The Victoria & Albert Museum. London: V&A, 1985, p.102
  • Goldberg, Norman L. John Crome the elder. Oxford: Phaidon, 1978, p. 198, cat. no. 57
  • pp. 216-7 In the light of Cuyp : Aelbert Cuyp & Gainsborough, Constable, Turner with contributions from David Blayney Brown, John Chu, Mark Evans, Rieke van Leeuwen, Quirine van der Meer Mohr, Sandre Paarlberg and others ; edited by Marlies Enklaar & Sander Paarlberg. Zwolle : WBOOKS 2021. 9789462584570. Published to accompany an exhibition held at Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, 3 October 2021 - 6 March 2022.
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
232-1879

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Record createdDecember 15, 1999
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O17794/view-on-mousehold-heath-near-oil-painting-crome-john/
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