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Ancient Beech Tree

Watercolour Drawing
1794 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Sandby, Paul (artist)
Place of origin
England (painted)

Paul Sandby (1730-1809) painted this watercolour in an unknown location. It is one of his most powerful and striking works, almost a portrait of a tree.

Sandy painted a similar landscape that is now in the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, USA. This has been recognised as showing a view of Bridgnorth seen from the other side of the River Severn in Shropshire.

Object details

Categories
Drawings
Paintings
Object type
Watercolour drawing
Titles
  • Ancient Beech Tree (popular title)
  • Morning (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Bodycolour on paper
Paper
Opaque Watercolour
Painting
Brief description
Paul Sandby (About 1730-1809), 'Ancient Beech Tree', 1794, bodycolour
Physical description
Bodycolour landscape entitled 'Ancient Beech Tree'.
Dimensions
  • Height: 42cm (Note: Taken from Lionel Lambourne, British Watercolours in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1980)
  • Width: 58.4cm (Note: Taken from Lionel Lambourne, British Watercolours in the V&A, 1980)
  • Gilt frame height: 680mm (Note: FRAME)
  • Gilt frame width: 840cm (Note: FRAME)
Style
British School
Gallery label
[Provisional label written by Ronald Parkinson for his travelling exhibition and accompanying book British Watercolours at the Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A Publications, 1998.]

Paul SANDBY R.A. (1730-1809)
AN ANCIENT BEECH TREE 1794
Signed and dated P.Sandby 1794
70.2 x 105.7 cm
Purchased before 1860
FA 383

One of Sandby's most powerful and striking works, this is in effect a 'portrait' of a magnificent tree. Its massive twisted trunk and its many branches dominate the composition and dwarf the figures in the foregound. The figures consist of two men, one holding a hat apparently filled with mushrooms, with a young girl, and a man and a woman in a donkey cart riding on the path towards the river.

There are several drawings of ancient trees by both Paul Sandby and his brother Thomas. Such trees, apart from their majestic appearance, were also natural objects of curiosity. For instance, a great beech tree in the grounds of Windsor Castle, where both artists worked, was supposed to have been so enormous that a woodman, his wife and four children, a sow and several pigs, lived in its trunk. When it was eventually cut down, the residue left on the wood by the burning of peat by the family provided, so the story goes, the Sandbys with a good supply of bistre pigment for their paintings and drawings.

The location has not been identified, but there is a similar landscape by Sandby in the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven which has been recognised as a view of Bridgnorth seen from the other side of the River
Production
Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1795, no.579, as 'Morning'.
Subjects depicted
Landscape
Beech
Summary
Paul Sandby (1730-1809) painted this watercolour in an unknown location. It is one of his most powerful and striking works, almost a portrait of a tree.

Sandy painted a similar landscape that is now in the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, USA. This has been recognised as showing a view of Bridgnorth seen from the other side of the River Severn in Shropshire.
Bibliographic references
  • p. 32 Anne Anderson, Tim Craven, Della Hooke. Steve Marshall, Ian Massey, Under the Greenwood. Picturing the British tree from Constable to Kurt Jackson ISBN: 9781908326300
  • Coombs, Katherine British watercolours : 1750-1950 . London: V&A Publications, 2012 p.18, pl.7
  • Bonehill, John and Daniels,Stephen (eds.), Paul Sandby : Picturing Britain London : Royal Academy of Arts, 2009 101
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
FA.383

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Record createdMarch 9, 2001
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O56632/ancient-beech-tree-watercolour-drawing-sandby-paul/
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