John Linnell

By descent in the artist's family

Reigate, Town Hall, Samuel Palmer and John Linnell,1963, no. 53;
London, Colnaghi, A Loan Exhibition of Drawings, Watercolours and Paintings by John Linnell and his Circle, 1973, no. 67;
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, John Linnell; A Centennial Exhibition, 1983, no. 66

This work has been well preserved and carefully presented. The watercolour pigments remain fresh and strong and the body colour remains intact. The sheet has not discoloured but there is some very light foxing visible. This is extremely minor. Located at the left hand esge of the sheet there is a small crease. There is another very soft crease at the lower right hand corner. Located at the upper centre, there is a small pin prick. This work has been laid down to a non acidic board.
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This study of an endearing young farmer's boy was drawn in 1829 during Linnell's visit to Samuel Palmer in Shoreham with George Richmond. Together with another watercolour study (private collection) these works preceded the oil painting The Farmer's Boy which Linnell exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1830, no. 251 (of which a replica is in the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale).

Linnell and Richmond had accepted an invitation to escape the increasingly industrialised London and visit Palmer in rural Kent. They travelled from London to Riverhead, and from there they hired a cart for three shillings to complete the journey. It was during this visit that Linnell and Palmer were fascinated by this young farm hand, and both artists sketched him piping. Palmer's sketches are untraced but he later used a similar pose in his mid 1850s watercolour, The Piping Shepherd (Ulster Museum, Belfast).

This work provides a charming and iconic example of the poetic and romantic rural images which these close friends and like-minded artists (named 'The Ancients') produced. The recent death of their mentor, William Blake in 1827, undoubtedly inspired their fascination with rural innocence, escapism and spiritualism all of which is encapsulated in the charm of this image.

This work was created at a watershed in Linnell's career. To-date he had been considered a rather traditional and respected member of the artistic establishment. A founder member of the Society for Painters in Oil and Watercolours he was a successful painter of portraits which funded his sketching tours of the British Isles which he sketched and voraciously recorded in a similar style to his contemporaries Mulready and John and Cornelius Varley.

The first clear group of artists specifically joined together and determined to honour the ideals of poetry and sentiment in their art. They were as concerned to establish a way of life as well as develop a particular type of art. The repeated claim from which their name was taken was that 'ancient man was superior to modern man' and they idealised traditional values as opposed to the detrimental social effects of 'progress.' The rural retreat of Shoreham in Kent where this drawing was made was the group's 'pilgrimage' site. Here they gathered, drew, wandered during the day and night, recited poetry and idealised an innocence and charm which they believed was about to be swept away forever by the industrialisation of the world.