A Welsh Torrent

Location

Country: Uruguay
City: Montevideo
Place: British Embassy

The dark form of a Welsh mountain dominates this watercolour by Harold Sutton Palmer. Beneath the mountain a torrent, or fast moving stream, cuts through the rocky green landscape and races beneath a precarious bridge.

Harold Sutton Palmer was born in Devonport; the son of a china merchant. His family moved to London and he was educated at Camden Town High School and the South Kensington Schools. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, from 1870. After switching from still life to landscape, aged 20, he began illustrating books for publisher A. & C. Black. He painted landscapes in Surrey, Berkshire, the Lake District and Scotland for various A. & C. Black titles. He was elected to the Royal Society of British Landscape (1892) and Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (1920). From 1880 he held one-man shows in London and New York. In 1889 he married Maud Moore in San Jose, California, and later illustrated ‘California: The Land of the Sun’ (1914).

Places

Wales, Snowdonia

Subjects

topography, landscape C19th, lichen, tree, cloud, mountain, river, stone/rock, bridge (rural)

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), watercolour (as artists materials), watercolour (as object name)

Artist

Harold Sutton Palmer (1854 - 1933)

Title

A Welsh Torrent

Date

1875

Medium

Watercolour on paper

Dimensions

height: 56.00 cm, width: 77.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Christie's, 12 October 1976

Inscription

Sdbl: 'Sutton Palmer 1875'

Provenance

Collection of Miss Edith Barber; collection of soldier and equestrian Major (Alexander) Ronald George Strutt, 4th Baron Belper (1912-1999) of Kingston Hall, Nottinghamshire; by whom sold through Christie's, London, 'English Drawings and Watercolours' sale, on 12 October 1976 (Lot 157); from which sale purchased by the Department of the Environment

GAC number

12491