drawing
- Museum number
- 1915,0213.2
- Description
-
Streatley, Berkshire; view in a field enclosed by a wall, trees at left, beyond the wall a series of low red brick buildings. 1859
Watercolour
- Production date
- 1859
- Dimensions
-
Height: 134 millimetres
-
Width: 386 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Gere 1994
Boyce recorded in his journal on 27 February 1860 that "Major Gillum paid me 16 gns. for the drawing done at Streatley of the long-grass meadow and mowers".
Stainton 1985
As a young man Boyce trained as an architect, but in 1849 he met David Cox and decided to become a landscape painter. Until well into the 1850s Boyce was still painting broad atmospheric studies of Welsh scenery in the spirit of his teacher, but towards the end of the decade his watercolours developed a distinctly Pre-Raphaelite character as in this view of Streatley, dated 1859. His architectural training is reflected in his meticulously detailed attention to the farm buildings, and it is characteristic of his manner of composition that they should act as a screen across the design. The bright colouring (especially the sharp tones of green) and the detailed handling are also distinctly Pre-Raphaelite.
Boyce had independent means (his father, like Ruskin's, had been a prosperous wine merchant) and was an avid collector both of the work of his Pre-Raphaelite friends - including Rossetti, Inchbold and Seddon - and of French artists. He kept a diary between 1851 and 1875 (which reflects an attractive, if unnecessary, degree of modesty about his own talents), an important source of information about the Pre-Raphaelite circle.
The following text is taken from the label for the British Museum display 'Sketchbooks and Watercolours by Joanna and George Price Boyce':
By the late 1850s George Boyce had moved away from painting broad atmospheric studies influenced by David Cox, and adopted a detailed, closely observed style consistent with Pre-Raphaelite landscapes. His strong sense of spatial relationships in this period can be seen in the unusual horizontal arrangement of meadow, buildings and clouds in this composition.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1958 Apr, BM, Eight centuries of landscape ... water-colours, Section 88
1985, BM, British Landscape Watercolours 1600-1860, no.188
1987 Jun-Aug, London, Tate Gallery, 'George Price Boyce', no. 26
1991 Jan-Mar, Cleveland MA, Ohio, BM English Watercolours, no. 94
1991 Mar-Jun, N Carolina MA, BM English Watercolours, no. 94
1994-1995 Sep-Jan, BM, Pre-Raphaelite Drawings, no.49
2012 May-Jul, BM, P&D, Room 90, 'Joanna and George Price Boyce'
- Acquisition date
- 1915
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1915,0213.2