19. HINDHEAD FROM WITLEY COMMON
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Lord Chief Justice of England.
Painted 1888.
When this drawing appeared in the Exhibition of 1889 there were some who called in question the truthfulness of the colour of distant Hindhead, affirming that it was too blue. But when the air comes up in August from the southward, laden with a salty moisture, and the shadows are cast by hurrying clouds over the distance, it is altogether and exactly of the hue set down here. Had the effect been incorrect it would hardly have been acquired by so critical a collector as Lord Alverstone, nor would it have been hung in his Surrey home, where it invites daily comparison with Nature under similar aspects. The drawing was painted on the spot, from just behind the artist’s house, and is one of the few instances where she has added to the charm of her work by a sky of some intricacy. In her cottage and other drawings, where buildings or other landscape objects are of primary importance, she has felt that the simpler the treatment of the sky the better, and with good reason. Here, where a large expanse calls for interesting forms to cover it, she has shown her complete ability to introduce them.
Mrs. Allingham’s house at Sandhills was below the foreground slope, to the right of the cottages whose roofs rise from the ling. The highest point of Hindhead seen here is Hurt Hill, some nine hundred feet above sea-level, a name which Mr. Allingham always held to be a corruption of Whort Hill, from the whortleberries with which its slopes are covered, and which in these, as in other parts are called “wurts.”
20. IN WITLEY VILLAGE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Charles Churchill.
Painted 1884.
This drawing was in The Fine Art Society’s Exhibition in 1886, the catalogue stating that the cottage had disappeared in the spring of 1885. It was pulled down by its owner to be replaced by buildings whose monotonous symmetry, to his eye no doubt, appeared in better taste. The cottage was still far from the natural term of its existence, as evidenced by the troublesome piece of work it was to dislocate the sound, firm old oaken beams of which its framework was built up. Mr. Birket Foster, who equally with Mrs. Allingham mourned its disappearance, regretted that he could not rebuild it in his own grounds.
The blackening elms, and the ripe bracken carried home by the cottar, show that the time when this picturesque dwelling was painted was late summer, probably that of 1884. Mrs. Allingham was clearly then not of Ruskin’s opinion concerning the wrongness of painting trees in full leaf, for she found the blue-black of the trees a harmonious background to her red and russet roof.
The work throughout shows a loving fidelity to Nature, as if the artist had felt that she was looking upon the likeness of an old friend for the last time, and wished to perpetuate every lineament and feature.
21. BLACKDOWN FROM WITLEY COMMON
From the Water-colour in the possession of Lord Davey.
Painted 1886.