Provenance

H. Darell Brown

British, died 1924

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 butter-yellow sky fills the top two-thirds of this square landscape painting while in the bottom third, a brown structure is surrounded by golden yellow and pine-green forms like clouds. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, so much of the detail is indistinct, and the view seems hazy. Clouds spiral around the sun or moon, painted as a pale yellow disk, hanging in the center of the sky. The golden yellow clouds near the center darken to slate gray then rust brown, and nearly wine red along the top edge. A flock of birds painted as a dense band of navy and denim-blue Vs curve around the sun and continue into the deep distance. Below, touches of burgundy red and brown could indicate people or animals around the arched, copper-brown structure. Cloud-like puffs in forest green and golden yellow could be a forest or wildly crashing waves. A few faint outlines in this area suggest a bear, crocodile, giraffe, and maybe other ghostly creatures.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Evening of the Deluge, c. 1843, oil on canvas, Timken Collection, 1960.6.40

The Evening of the Deluge

Joseph Mallord William Turner · c. 1843 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1960.6.40

Bibliography

1924

  • Christie, Manson & Woods. [Brown sale]. London, 23 May 1924.