Spring, Arnside Knot from Warton Crag, by Daniel Alexander Williamson (1823-1903). 1863. Oil on canvas. 10 5/8 x 16 inches (27 x 40.6 cm). Collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, accession no. WAG 784. Image courtesy of Walker Art Gallery under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).
This painting, also known as Spring, Arnside Knot and Coniston Range of Hills from Warton Crag, is another of the major landscapes Williamson produced during his Pre-Raphaelite period in the early 1860s. It is a marvel of Pre-Raphaelite precision and detail. When Williamson painted this work he had moved from London and was living at that time at Warton-in-Carnforth in North Lancashire. In an undated pamphlet on the artist James Smith of Blundellsands, a wealthy Liverpool wine merchant and Williamson's principal patron, drew attention to the importance of Williamson's close familiarity with this particular locality of the Lancashire countryside: "Though working mainly in a limited locality for many years, in his subjects he does not repeat himself in tone or colour. He looks at natural objects, trees, rocks, water, the clouds, broadly, giving them wonderful truth [in] their form and local colour" (Smith 5-6; qtd in Newall, Pre-Raphaelite Vision, 164).
Christopher Newall has described the scene Williamson has chosen to portray:
The vantage point must have been near the foot of Warton Crag, perhaps in the area known as Grisedale Wood close to Leighton Hall. Arnside Knott is another mass of carboniferous limestone, about four kilometres to the north-west. The quarried side of Arnside Knott, clearly seen in Williamson's painting, remains visible from Warton. On the far horizon, and at a range of more than twenty kilometres, appear the mountains of the southern Lakes, with Coniston Old Man breaking the outline of Arnside Knott, and the Helvellyn massif beyond Ambleside at the head of Windermere further to the right. In the foreground fissured blocks of limestone are seen scattered among the low vegetation of gorse, yews, and dead bracken. The season is early spring, with fresh grass pushing through and the gorse already in flower" (Newall, Pre-Raphaelite Vision, 164).
Newall had previously described this scene as one of a series of paintings Williamson did when living in Warton:
In the early 1860s he painted a series of views of the carboniferous hillsides which rise close to the coast at Morecambe Bay. Spring is one of these, showing in the left foreground pieces of broken limestone; Arnside Knot itself is the wooded ridge in the middle distance, viewed at a range of about four kilometres, while on the far horizon may be seen the higher mountains of the Coniston Fells. The artist adopted a meticulous technique, which allowed the distinctive textures and colours of the landscape to be seen and relished: the limestone is a pale grey color, while the flowers of the gorse are a brilliant yellow; fresh grass is springing through, but the ravages of winter are seen in the masses of dead bracken, which shows as a foxy red. The sky is a neutral grey, except on the right where rain clouds sweep across. This is a work of utter simplicity, and one that was perhaps intended to be seen in conjunction with others in the series of Williamson's views of and from Warton Crag. Together they form an exercise in the description of a particular and immediate locality, which was clearly dear to the artist, and this stands as a single-minded enterprise in mountain portraiture. [Newall, British Vision, 277]
Allen Staley has compared this work to Morecambe Bay from Warton Crag, finding it to be
more individual and more remarkable. While the colour of Morecambe Bay is borrowed from Hunt, in the later picture the colour no longer seems derivative. The foreground is made up of bright green grass, orange bracken, and yellow gorse. The group of trees before the rock outcrop are deep purplish red, and Arnside Knot in the distance is vibrantly blue. Throughout the picture the colours are so heightened that the landscape seems to glow. In both pictures there are flocks of birds in the sky, but all else is still. The sheep in the foreground of Morcambe Bay seem as immobile as the rocks, and in the foreground of Arnside Knot a rabbit crouches motionless. The world is seen frozen for a moment, and with hyper-clarity. [148]
Staley felt this work was inspired by Pre-Raphaelitism but also recalled the visionary works of Samuel Palmer, although it is unlikely Williamson was even aware of this artist.
Bibliography
Milner, Frank. The Pre-Raphaelites. Pre-Raphaelite Paintings & Drawings in Merseyside Collections. Liverpool: The Bluecoat Press, 1998.
Newall, Christopher. British Vision. Observation and Imagination in British Art 1750-1950. Ghent: Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Robert Hooze Ed., 2007, cat. 198.
Newall, Christopher. Pre-Raphaelites: Beauty and Rebellion. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016. 98-99.
Smith, James. Two Liverpool Artists: In Memoriam. Privately printed, not dated.
Spring, Arnside Knot from Warton Crag. Art UK. Web. 16 August 2024.
Staley, Allen and Christopher Newall. Pre-Raphaelite Vision: Truth to Nature. London: Tate Publishing, 2004, cat. 97.
Staley, Allen. The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Created 16 August 2024