Summer; Noon- Arundel Park

In Blake’s poem Jerusalem he describes the English countryside as a “green and pleasant land” with “mountains green”, “pleasant pastures” and “clouded hills”. It is a defiantly pre-Industrial picture and, in many ways, this is how we like to think of the English countryside – a place of timeless beauty, unsullied by modern life. The countryside has so many different faces, packed into a small geographical area – as Shakespeare said, a “precious stone set in a silver sea”. This diversity is one of the things that makes England unique. When you think of the countryside, what is the picture in your mind? Do you think of Constable’s sunlit Suffolk? Or Wordsworth’s dramatic Lake District? The wild moors of Brontë country or Thomas Hardy’s ancient Wessex? How about the bleak beauty of the Fens? The dramatic, rugged shoreline of Cornwall, or the gentle hills of the Cotswolds?

 

In Cole’s magnificent view in Arundel Park we see an English landscape in pristine untouched condition with the only hint of man’s existance in the castle that sits on the distant hill side and the smoke that rises from village chimnies beyond that. Otherwise we are treated to a glorious lush, green picture of unspoilt natural beauty covered with late afternoon shadows and a wonderful dazzling blue sky. The threat of photography to the traditional landscape painter only served to spur him on to even greater quality, trying to follow Ruskin’s guidelines of painting nature as closely as possible.

 

It comes as no surprise to discover that this work was offered the ultimate praise in its day in being chosen for the Royal Academy exhibition in the year of its execution. This view is further strengthend by the huge price paid for it by the leading fine art dealer of the day Thomas Agnew when it came up for sale at Christies in 1879.

Cole was born at Portsmouth, the son of the landscape painter, George Cole (1810-1883), and in his practice followed his father's lead with marked success. He exhibited at the British Institution at the age of nineteen, and was first represented at the Royal Academy in 1853. His election as an associate of this institution took place in 1870, and he became an Academician ten years later. He died in London on the 6th of April 1893. The wide popularity of his work was due partly to the simple directness of his technical method, and partly to his habitual choice of attractive material.

Most of his subjects were found in the counties of Surrey and Sussex, and along the banks of the Thames. One of his largest pictures, The Pool of London, was bought by the Chantrey Fund Trustees in 1888, and is now in the Tate Gallery.

When awarded full membership in 1880 he was the first landscape painter to have been recognized in this way for 30 years.