By Kind Permission of Lancaster University Library
By Kind Permission of Lancaster University Library
The appreciation Ruskin expresses here, was to change. In Academy Notes (1855), where he discusses Creswick 's painting The River Bank, he states:
This, like most others of the landscapes hung on the line, is one of those works so characteristic of the English School, and so little creditable to them, in which everything is carelessly or ill painted - because it is in landscape. Nothing is really done. The cows have imperfect horns and hides; the girl has an imperfect face and imperfect hands; the trees have imperfect leaves; the sky imperfect clouds; the water imperfect waves. The colour must either be right - that is, infinitely beautiful; or wrong - that is less than beautiful. All tame and dead colour is false colour. ( Works, 14.13)
Thomas Creswick 1811-1869
Oak c.1842
?Watercolour, 10x6cm
Further Comments: The oak tree designed by Creswick was the first illustration to the poem, the 'Nut Brown Maid', in the 'British Book of Ballads', 1842.
Collection: Location unknown