The Arts In Berwick -- Visual Arts -- Painting
In Search of the Picturesque


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When Burns spent a day in Berwick in 1787, he noted it was "An idle town, but rudely picturesque". The term "picturesque" was top of the artistic agenda at the time, and in 1794 Sir Uvedale Price published his "Essay on the Picturesque" codifying how artists could create compositions with "variety, movement and asymmetry".

When Samuel Prout (1783-1852) came to Norham in 1814, he found just what Sir Uvedale ordered. He wrote in his journal:-
"I most sorrowed in being obliged to make memorandum only under my umbrella at Norham, a very picturesque village with a ruined castle grouping in the best composition imaginable, all I think could be wished for at a village scene, but the rain fell in incessant torrents and I could only catch the slightest sketches."
The resulting picture, worked up from sketches afterwards, has a serenity that gives no hint of the rain. This was typical of many artists at the time.

In 1808 John Varley (1772-1842) had stayed with his patrons the Tankervilles at Chillingham Castle, making sketches at Bamburgh and Holy Island. One of his views of Holy Island Priory is illuminated by the setting sun, and like Prout, has a peasant in the foreground to create "movement". In addition, Varley's work reflects his personal fascination with astrology and the psychology of melancholia. The two artists were also exponents of the comparative new medium of watercolour, with Varley having Linnell, Copley Fielding, Cox and De Wint among his pupils.

Another enthusiast for the style was William Daniell (1769-1837), who included a view of Berwick in his Picturesque Voyage Around Great Britain (1814-15). But, although their compositions corresponded to the requirements of contemporary critics, they also resembled the calm Italianate landscapes of Richard Wilson (1714-82) and antiquarians like the Buck brothers.