DOI Heft:
No. 136 (July, 1904)
DOI Artikel:Holland, Clive: The work of Frederick Whitehead, a painter of Thomas Hardy's "Wessex"
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19882#0128
A Painter of Hardy s IVessex
upon the green-brown uplands shown in the left of
the picture that Ethelberta (in Thomas Hardy's
romance " The Hand of Ethelberta ") stood in this
" antique land " with the silver sunbeams lighting
up the many-armed inland sea, " which stretched
round an island with fir trees and gorse, amid
brilliant crimson heaths wherein white paths and
roads occasionally met the eye in dashes and
zigzags like flashes of lightning." And here truly
do " breezes the freshest that could blow without
verging on keenness fly over the quivering deeps
and shallows; and the sunbeams pierce every
detail of barrow, path, and rabbit-run upon the
lofty convexity of down and waste which shut in
Knollsea (Swanage) from the world to the west."
Here too are, as Mr. Hardy says, those " grassed
hills, like knuckles gloved in dark olive, and little
plantations between them," forming a deeper and
sad monochrome.
It is this Wessex that has for the last decade
been the chief source of inspiration to Mr. White-
head, the chief locale of his most important pictures.
It is a particularly " coy " land, and only the artist
who makes it a matter of serious and continued
study can hope to become acquainted with its ever-
varying moods and many changing conditions of
light and atmosphere.
One may come to Wessex one day, and find it a
smiling, sun-bathed land, reminding one in parts
of Surrey; and on another occasion, and in another
spot not many miles removed, find it like a bit of
the Western coast of Scotland, with ruddy heather,
lowering sky, and steel-grey pools, beside which one
almost expects to find Highland cattle standing.
Most people who are possessed of the least sym-
pathy with nature will find in Mr. Whitehead's
work just that element of idealised truth with
which the artist of parts and observation success-
fully imbues his canvases. It is the ability which
he displays to catch the atmosphere, and get, as it
were, into the landscape, which is, with its breadth
of treatment, one of the chief distinguishing char-
acteristics of his work. There are, indeed, few of
his now numerous pictures which do not convey
an impression of sympathy with the subject, whether
it be a sunlit pasture, such as that so wonderfully
described in " Tess of the D'Urbervilles"; an
expanse of moorland, with steel-grey pools, under a
lowering sky, as is seen in our reproduction, The
Quiet Woman Inn (p. 116), which is described in
"The Return of the Native," andstands not far distant
from Mr. Hardy's birthplace ; a " reeds and rushes "
stretch of placidly flowing river similar to that
Mr. Whitehead has painted in The Frome, near
Dorchester (p. 106); or a homely cottage set in a
picturesque garden, fair with old-fashioned flowers
upon the green-brown uplands shown in the left of
the picture that Ethelberta (in Thomas Hardy's
romance " The Hand of Ethelberta ") stood in this
" antique land " with the silver sunbeams lighting
up the many-armed inland sea, " which stretched
round an island with fir trees and gorse, amid
brilliant crimson heaths wherein white paths and
roads occasionally met the eye in dashes and
zigzags like flashes of lightning." And here truly
do " breezes the freshest that could blow without
verging on keenness fly over the quivering deeps
and shallows; and the sunbeams pierce every
detail of barrow, path, and rabbit-run upon the
lofty convexity of down and waste which shut in
Knollsea (Swanage) from the world to the west."
Here too are, as Mr. Hardy says, those " grassed
hills, like knuckles gloved in dark olive, and little
plantations between them," forming a deeper and
sad monochrome.
It is this Wessex that has for the last decade
been the chief source of inspiration to Mr. White-
head, the chief locale of his most important pictures.
It is a particularly " coy " land, and only the artist
who makes it a matter of serious and continued
study can hope to become acquainted with its ever-
varying moods and many changing conditions of
light and atmosphere.
One may come to Wessex one day, and find it a
smiling, sun-bathed land, reminding one in parts
of Surrey; and on another occasion, and in another
spot not many miles removed, find it like a bit of
the Western coast of Scotland, with ruddy heather,
lowering sky, and steel-grey pools, beside which one
almost expects to find Highland cattle standing.
Most people who are possessed of the least sym-
pathy with nature will find in Mr. Whitehead's
work just that element of idealised truth with
which the artist of parts and observation success-
fully imbues his canvases. It is the ability which
he displays to catch the atmosphere, and get, as it
were, into the landscape, which is, with its breadth
of treatment, one of the chief distinguishing char-
acteristics of his work. There are, indeed, few of
his now numerous pictures which do not convey
an impression of sympathy with the subject, whether
it be a sunlit pasture, such as that so wonderfully
described in " Tess of the D'Urbervilles"; an
expanse of moorland, with steel-grey pools, under a
lowering sky, as is seen in our reproduction, The
Quiet Woman Inn (p. 116), which is described in
"The Return of the Native," andstands not far distant
from Mr. Hardy's birthplace ; a " reeds and rushes "
stretch of placidly flowing river similar to that
Mr. Whitehead has painted in The Frome, near
Dorchester (p. 106); or a homely cottage set in a
picturesque garden, fair with old-fashioned flowers