Scene in Switzerland
by Walter Woodhead

Research by Jacqueline Arundel

Acc No                    143
Artist                       Walter Woodhead
Artist dates             1867 -1946
Medium                   watercolour
Size                         unknown
Date painted            unknown
Donated by              The artist
Date donated           September 1946

PAINTING

A landscape painted from life, 'en plein air’, which means ‘in the open air'.

Scene in Switzerland was painted by Walter Woodhead (1867–1946) in watercolour on paper. The late summer afternoon sun tinges the scene with warm ochres and yellow greens; a clouded blue sky and purple grey mountains lie in the distance. The differing colour temperatures and tonal qualities of each of the three planes define their distance and clarify their location in space, adding depth to the picture. The path of vision leads you into the painting to a farmer and his donkey working near their cart, leading on over a gate next to a barn to the vanishing point at the bottom of the tree. Your eye is then led right along a path or road, indicated by the fenced bridge, and up the hill along the line of trees into the distance. A river flowing from the distant mountains also aids in leading your eye into the picture; three sheep graze on the riverbank. According to William Gilpin (1724-1804), sheep and cattle are a necessity in any landscape picture and his aesthetic ​ideal of ‘picturesque’. (1)

Woodhead has used a low viewpoint to emphasise the ‘sublime’, the vastness of the mountains, and probably ‘added’ the partially dead tree, possibly struck by lightning on the riverbank, to add nature with the composition thus creating a more balanced ‘picturesque’ picture;  both beautiful and sublime this painting evokes a sense of tranquillity. With a limited use of washes Woodhead has painted light to dark without much blending of colours, using brush strokes or shapes of colour instead, overlaid or juxtaposed to define objects. Woodhead's painterly style is reminiscent of the Impressionists and Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) famous statement to an American woman: “When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you; a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape, until it gives you your own naïve impression of the scene before you”. (2) 

REFERENCES

(1) Gilpin, W, (1724-1804), Sartin, S, (1976), Thomas Sidney Cooper, CVO, RA, 1803-1902, Leigh-on-Sea, F Lewis Publishers Ltd.

(2) Monet, C, (1840-1926), Eds: Katz, K & Dars, (2002), The Impressionists, Leicester, Abbeydale Press.


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 Works by Walter Woodhead in the ​Lytham Art Collection

1.     Acc No   85    Farm Cottage
2.     Acc No   113  Landscape and River Scene
3.     Acc No   140  Greba Castle, 'Isle of Man'
4.     Acc No   115  Bolton Abbey
5.     Acc No   253  St Annes-on-the-Sea 1913
6.     Acc No   86 Cottage on the Sandhills
7.     Acc No   134 Rocky Coast Scene (chalk pastel)
8.     Acc No   144  In the Orchard
9.     Acc No   127 Fylde Bridge
10.   Acc No   142 Roses
11.   Acc No   117 Landscape and Mountain Stream,
                             A Yorkshire Dale (oil)
12.   Acc No   96 Fylde Landscape (oil)
13.   Acc No   84 St Annes Parish Church
14.   Acc No   143 Scene in Switzerland
15.   Acc No   256 Still Life with Sweet Pea and Lilac 
16.   Acc No   159 On the Moor, Ilkley
17.   Acc No   138 The Harbour, Brixham, Devon 1932