Kirkman Daniel Hodgson

British, 1814 - 1879

Explore Selected Works

Two windmills are backlit by silvery moonlight along the horizon of this loosely painted, horizontal landscape. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition. The left half of the painting is nearly filled with a towering tree with muted olive-green leaves and a tan trunk. Some dark branches dip toward the river that runs from the bottom center of the painting into the distance, in front of the windmills. Light shimmers on the gently rippling surface, which is lined to our right with grassy vegetation. A hollowed out, gnarled, broken tree trunk twists against the sky from the riverbank to our right. The windmills are in the near distance, facing off to our left. Their sails create Xs against the screen of pearly white clouds floating against a muted blue sky.
John Crome, Moonlight on the Yare, c. 1816/1817, oil on canvas, Paul Mellon Collection, 1983.1.39

Moonlight on the Yare

John Crome · c. 1816/1817 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1983.1.39

A passenger boat, its bright tan sails reflecting the sun, careens among choppy water with at least eight more sailboats and a town along the water’s edge in the distance in this horizontal landscape painting. The water closest to us is muted slate blue, and it lightens as it extends to the horizon, which comes less than a quarter of the way up this composition. We look onto the long side of the passenger boat, at nine men, women, and children huddled in two groups there, in the lower center of the composition. The people wear black, white, red, or blue, and all seem to wear hats, though they are sketchily painted. Foamy, white crests lap at the long side of the tilted boat. Several larger ships with white sails unfurled float beyond to our left. To our right, seven flags and banners fly from a three-masted ship with its sails tied up. Two rows of more than a dozen black canons each poke through doors along the side we can see. It floats upright, closer to the distant town lining the water across the right half of the picture. The buildings are painted with strokes of white paint to create loose silhouettes. Loosely painted vertical strokes suggest more boats and ships lining the harbor. A bank of cream-white and some pale gray clouds fill most of the sky, breaking to reveal blue sky only in the upper right corner of the painting.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rotterdam Ferry-Boat, 1833, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.135

Rotterdam Ferry-Boat

Joseph Mallord William Turner · 1833 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1970.17.135

Bibliography

1900

  • Burke, Sir Bernard. History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain. 10th ed. Edited by Ashworth P. Burke. London, 1900: 85.