Ullswater with Goldrill Bridge

Location

Country: Belarus
City: Minsk
Place: British Embassy

This landscape by John Glover is dominated by a large tree and Goldrill Bridge, located on the banks of Ullswater Lake, in the English Lake District. Beyond we see Ullswater itself and the breath-taking scenery surrounding the lake.

Glover first exhibited a view of the Lake District at the Royal Academy in 1795. He visited the area, presumably for a second time, with artists Robert Hills and William Green in 1803. From the beginning of the 19th century metropolitan interest in the area grew and Glover’s numerous Lake District scenes in watercolour, exhibited at the first few annual exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Watercolours (1805­07), undoubtedly encouraged other artists to visit the Lakes.

This view of Goldrill Bridge shows a location close to where Glover briefly owned a farm. One of the artist’s sketchbooks (1826-31; State Library, New South Wales, Australia) includes a drawing of ‘Gold Roll [sic] Bridge’ with fishermen beneath and figures crossing the bridge. Glover also exhibited oil paintings of the area: ‘View of Ulswater’ [sic] at the Liverpool Academy (1811) and both ‘Ullswater; early morning’ (1825) and ‘Gold Rill Beck and Place Fell, near Ullswater’ (1827) at the British Institution, London. An almost identical painting to this was with Agnew's Gallery, London, in January 1980.

John Glover, landscape painter, was born in 1767 in Leicestershire, the son of a farmer. He was largely self-taught as an artist and began his working life as a school teacher in Cumbria and later as a Drawing Master in Lichfield. During the 1790s he began to paint in oils and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1795. He was a founder member of the Society of Painters in Water-colours and served as President in 1807 and 1814/15. He was also a founder member of the Society of British Artists in 1824. After emigrating to Australia with his family in 1831, he settled at Mill’s Plains on the Nile River in Tasmania, where he remained until his death. There he combined sheep farming with painting landscapes.

Places

England, Goldrill Bridge, Lake District, Cumbria, Goldrill Beck, Ullswater, Sheffield Pike, Grisedale, Patterdale

Subjects

topography, landscape C19th, tree, cow, river, hill, stone/rock, bridge (rural), house

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

John Glover (1767 - 1849)

Title

Ullswater with Goldrill Bridge

Date

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 92.50 cm, width: 132.50 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Agnew's, February 1977

Inscription

none

Provenance

With Phillips, Son & Neal by June 1970; with Agnew’s Gallery, London; from whom purchased by the Department of the Environment in February 1977

GAC number

12839