British Paintings

On View: West Building, Main Floor

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42 artworks on view.

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An elegantly dressed young woman, a little boy, girl, and a dog are gathered on a veranda in front of a sun-dappled landscape in this vertical portrait painting. All three people have pale skin with rosy cheeks. To our left, the woman sits facing us in front of a low, pewter-gray balustrade. She loosely embraces both children who lean onto her lap, to our right, as the shaggy, dark gray dog looks on. The woman has a slender, oval face, a long nose, rose-red lips, and hazel eyes that gaze just beyond our right shoulder. She wears a diaphanous, parchment-white gown belted at the waist and cinched at the elbow. Over the gown, a voluminous, dusty rose-pink mantle drapes over one shoulder and wraps around her hips and legs. Her dark gray hair is piled high on her head, and loosely painted strokes of garnet red suggest a scarf wrapped around the top. One long tendril loops over one shoulder. The boy closest to the woman rests his elbow along her lap so his body turns slightly away from her. His round face is framed by chestnut-brown curls and bangs, and he looks off to our right with blue eyes. He wears a cranberry-red jacket and breeches, with a gold and yellow striped vest. The wide collar of his white shirt is spread open, and one frilled cuff extends from the sleeve we can see. The woman holds the hand resting on her lap, and both she and the boy wrap their other arms around the little girl. The boy’s small fingers are tucked in at the back of the girl’s neck, just under the woman’s hand. The girl’s body turns as she leans into the boy, reaching one hand to grip his vest. Honey-blond curls frame her round face. She ducks her head as she looks to our right, a smile on her lips. She wears a cream-white gown belted with a celestial-blue sash. Facing away from us, the small dog sits and looks up at the trio. It has shaggy, charcoal-gray, tawny-brown, and white fur. Beyond the balustrade, tall trees covered in pine-green, gold, and brown leaves spread out on either side and recede toward hazy, lilac-purple mountains in the far distance.

Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children

Sir Joshua Reynolds

1777-1779

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1937.1.95

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M59
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We look across churning waves at four sailing ships and a wooden rowboat with four men aboard in this horizontal painting. Dark, iron-gray and tawny-brown clouds approaching from the right fill the top two-thirds of the composition. The water closest to us roils with steel gray and tan, which deepens to charcoal gray as it recedes toward low hills in the distant background. In the lower left corner of the painting, a wooden container bobs in the waves, and a white bird flies low over the water nearby. Two ships to the left of center head directly toward us, leaning steeply to our left with their beige sails taut with wind. Two men, tiny in scale, stand on the deck of the ship to our left. To our right, two ships with butter-yellow and peach sails cut through the water. Three men stand on the deck of the ship in the front, pulling on the rigging. Closest to us and to the right of center, the rowboat crests a wave, tilting forward so we look into the long side of the boat and see the four men there. Near the stern, one man hangs over the side while another holds onto him. Two men sit to the right, one facing us while the other faces away. Sunlight streaks down through a break in the storm clouds to fall on a ship with furled sails in the distance at the center of the composition. This and two additional ships near the distant shoreline are silhouetted against bands of white clouds around blue sky, beyond the bank of dark gray clouds closer to us.

The Junction of the Thames and the Medway

Joseph Mallord William Turner

1807

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1942.9.87

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M57
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We look across an expanse of a flat, grassy lawn at the towering spire of a stone church outlined against billowing clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. The lawn is dappled with light filtering through a line of trees with thick, green canopies to our left. The trees take up almost the left half of the composition, and they line a dirt path where three people walk. Tiny in scale, the people are painted with strokes of slate blue, red, white, and black. A few animals, perhaps cows, graze on the lawn near more trees on the far side of the green. Beyond the trees, the church sits on the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. Minuscule touches of yellow, black, and red may suggest more people in the deep distance. The pale blue sky is nearly filled with puffy parchment-white and mauve-tinged clouds.

Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close

John Constable

1820

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1937.1.108

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M57
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In this painting, two young women are depicted sitting closely together. They are positioned side by side, with the woman on the left slightly leaning against the other woman and looking to the right, while the woman on the right looks out at us. Both women have pale skin and light eyes, and they wear neutral expressions. The woman on the left has curly brown-and-gray hair adorned with a light blue ribbon, while the woman on the right has her blonde hair styled under a cream-colored bonnet. Both are dressed in elegant, high-waisted white gowns tied at the waist with pale blue sashes. The woman on the left has her arm around the other woman's shoulders, and she holds a paper scroll in one hand. The woman on the right holds a large red folder filled with several white papers in her right hand, and she holds something small and gold in her other hand. On the left, a sleeping brown-and-white dog rests at their feet, nestled into the fabric of the women's skirts. Tall, dark trees are behind the women in the upper right corner, while the background in the upper left corner showcases a serene, hilly landscape featuring olive-green foliage and a distant view of a tall blue mountain under a partly cloudy light blue sky.

The Frankland Sisters

John Hoppner

1795

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1937.1.111

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M59
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From a grassy riverbank, we look across the placid surface of a river lined along the far bank with trees and farm animals in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is painted loosely with brushstrokes visible throughout, so some details are difficult to make out. For the surface of the river, russet-brown and steel-gray paint skims lightly across the canvas and leaves some unpainted areas visible, creating the effect of light shimmering on the still water. On our left, a shallow wooden barge is propelled along the stream by two men in red caps with long poles. The boat carries a white horse wearing blinders and a harness. The riverbank beyond is lined with pale, sage-green grass tinged with gold, growing in front of a tangle of darker green trees and bushes. Across the water from us near the middle of the picture, a small rowboat sits in the shallows at the foot of a steep riverbank. Above, a white cottage with a reddish roof and chimney is tucked behind the trees, with a wooden rack full of hay next to it. Nearby, a plow and wheeled cart, highlighted with strokes of white, sit near more mounds of hay. Rocky fields reach into the distance. The vista is blocked to our right by another clump of trees and a rocky outcropping, rising from the stream, to our right of center. The steep, dark roof of a farmhouse is barely visible among the trees. Along the riverside to our right, a small group of cinnamon-brown and cream-white cows stand at water's edge. A rolling pasture stretches behind them to meet blue hills in the distance. Above, in the upper third of the painting, mottled white, pale rose, and gray clouds rolling across a steel-gray sky are reflected in the water below.

The White Horse

John Constable

1818-1819

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1942.9.9

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M57
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A woman leans forward to trace the shadow cast by a sleeping young man on a wall in a dimly lit room in this horizontal painting. Both people have smooth, pale skin, long, straight noses, thin lips, and brown hair. The man sits and sleeps on a deep, wood chair. The scene is lit from over our left shoulder so he casts a shadow on the brown wall on which he leans. His right arm, closer to us, hangs by his side with his palm turned to face away from his body. The other arm lies across his bent knee. He wears a harvest-yellow tunic, and a sapphire-blue cloak drapes over his far arm and the thigh closer to us. A long spear rests across one shoulder, and a thin, muted-brown dog, like a greyhound, sleeps on the ground by the man’s side. The woman leans one knee onto the chair and reaches out with a stylus to capture the man’s shadow. She is barefoot and smiles gently at his face. She also wears a dark yellow dress, which exposes one bare shoulder. A mauve-pink cloth wraps over one shoulder and the bent thigh. A deep red curtain bunched up in the upper left corner hides the light source. An urn, nearly as tall as the chair, stands behind the man and another is tipped over behind the woman. An arched opening leads into a darkened room to our right. Rectangles of red and white seen through the top of a pointed arched window there are difficult to interpret. A table and some shelves with more urns are deep in the shadows.

The Corinthian Maid

Joseph Wright

1782-1784

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1983.1.46

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M61
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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.

Rotterdam Ferry-Boat

Joseph Mallord William Turner

1833

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1970.17.135

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M57
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A clean-shaven, pale-skinned man with gray, powdered hair stands in the middle of a grassy landscape in this vertical portrait painting. He has smooth skin with hazel eyes under thick brows, a long nose, and his full, pale pink lips are closed. He stands facing us with his ankles crossed and his head turned slightly to look off to our right. A knee-length, ginger-brown jacket has a row of gold-colored buttons, the size of checkers pieces, down the front and lacy cuffs at the end of a row of three more buttons on each sleeve. One button is fastened across his chest over a white cravat and goldenrod-yellow vest patterned with tiny brown specks. His left hand, on our right, hangs down, holding a navy-blue tricorn hat next to navy breeches. White stockings cover his lower legs, and his black shoes have gleaming brass buckles. He leans his right hand, to our left, on the head of a wood walking stick, which is propped against that hip. The landscape around him is carpeted in shades of muted green with touches of golden yellow. White and dark pink flowers grow in clusters around his feet, and a grove of slender trees climbs a low hill on our right. Blue-green trees and vegetation stretch into the distance to meet a light blue body of water along the left edge of the painting. Low on the horizon, which comes about a fifth of the way up the composition, a mountain is hazy blue in the deep distance. Patches of vivid blue sky peek through swirling white, gray, and pale peach clouds that fill most of the background.

John Musters

Sir Joshua Reynolds

1777-c. 1780

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1961.2.2

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M59
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A man stands with one arm resting over the back of a chestnut-brown horse as two women approach the animal in this horizontal portrait painting set in a landscape. The people have pale skin, dark eyes, and ash-brown or gray hair. At the center of the composition, the cleanshaven man stands with his body angled to our left as he looks off in that direction. He has a rounded nose, a dimple in his slight double chin, and he smiles faintly. A black tricorn hat sits on his gray hair, which curls up over his ears. His uniform has a long, pearl-white vest over a high, bright-white collar. His knee-length red coat is open, and the side closer to us is tucked back behind a sword hanging on that hip. The coat is lined with navy blue and gold down the front and around the cuff we see. The vest and coat have gold-colored buttons, and a gloved hand rests on the scabbard by his side. He wears white britches and knee-high, black boots with spurs. One ankle crosses in front of the other as he leans gently against the horse. The animal bends one back leg to rest along the front edge of its hoof as it reaches its muzzle forward, toward the women to our left. One woman sits in a wood armchair in front of the horse as she holds some pink flowers to the animal’s nose. She has a bumped nose, dark brows, and her delicate, pale pink lips are parted. Her hair is teased high and covered at the back with a white cloth. A voluminous, pearl-white, hooded shawl covers all of her upper body except the proffered hand. The lace edge of the white skirt puddles on the dirt ground. Behind her, the second woman leans over her crossed forearms, which rest on the back of the chair. This second woman has large eyes and delicate features. The top of her hair is also covered with a cloth, and she wears a black choker and a black apron over a sapphire-blue and white dress. A thick-trunked tree behind the women fills the left half of the composition, and its dark canopy reaches almost across the top half of the painting. A few plants line the far side of the dirt ground to our right. An expanse of silvery water curves like a C around a rocky promontory in the distance, also to our right. Smoke-gray mountains, hazy in the distance, stretch across the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. Some steel-gray and pale peach clouds cover much of the ice-blue sky.

Captain Samuel Sharpe Pocklington with His Wife, Pleasance, and possibly His Sister, Frances

George Stubbs

1769

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1952.9.4

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M61
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From a rocky shoreline, we look on several light-skinned people working by the sea with a boat and a net in this freely painted, almost square seascape. The scene is framed by a silhouette of low boulders along the lower right corner, and a towering cream-white rock rising two-thirds of the way up the composition to our left. Scrubby, celery-green vegetation grows on the rocky outcropping. Near the center, close to the towering white rocks, three people sit, reaching for something near one end of a boat while a fourth person braces against the rock, presumably to push the boat out to the sea. Closer to us, three people on the shore work with a net. Two stand with the net hooked over their shoulders, and a third person crouches in the water with head down. The people all wear simple shirts and pants in shades of tan, mustard yellow, burnt orange, and pale blue. All but two wear hats. The sea meets the shore with frothy white foam and cresting, low waves. The sea beyond fades from pale sage green to arctic blue along the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. Two sail boats tilt against the wind in the distance. Pale, smoky lavender-purple clouds drift across the ice-blue sky.

Seashore with Fishermen

Thomas Gainsborough

c. 1781/1782

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1970.17.121

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M58
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Shown from about the knees up, a young girl with pale skin and flushed cheeks stands in front of a landscape, looking at us in this vertical portrait painting. She stands with her body angled to our left, and she turns her face to us. Her chestnut-brown hair curls down the nape of her neck, and her bangs sweep across her forehead over slate-blue eyes. Her turned-up nose and pink bow mouth are set within in her round face. The girl’s smooth skin, her white dress, and her ivory-colored, wide-brimmed straw hat are brightly and evenly lit. Her flushed cheeks are echoed by the broad, petal-pink sash tied around her waist into a bow at her back and the matching ribbon of her hat, tied in a bow under her chin. A few streaks of pink also appear in the aquamarine-blue sky behind her. A hillside painted with tones of harvest gold and tawny brown slopes up from the lower left corner to the right edge of the canvas. The landscape is more loosely painted with lively brushstrokes.

Miss Juliana Willoughby

George Romney

1781-1783

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1937.1.104

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M59
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Armies of men march and battle along a rocky outcropping set among huge rock formations and massive buildings under a stormy sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The people we can see all have pale skin. Sheets of rain fall from flint-gray clouds on our left into a valley, though hints of peach brighten the clouds along the mountainous horizon there. In the right half of the sky, light pours down from a brilliant white sun that breaks through white clouds to reveal topaz-blue patches of sky. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition and is lined with rugged white, pale pink, and olive-green mountains on our left and silvery-white buildings along the right half. These structures include two domed buildings and a colosseum among many others. The buildings are all enclosed within city walls buttressed with towers. The land dips precipitously from the rocky cliffs supporting the buildings, to sweep down toward us. A huge outcropping angles up like a ramp between us and the buildings in the distance. A road runs from the walled town toward us, down along the ridge and in front of the outcropping. Countless warriors march in rows of four or five across on the road past a man wearing a feathered helmet and armored breastplate. This man, Joshua, stands on a rocky precipice facing away from us with his right hand raised. He wears a scarlet-red toga under his breastplate, and a royal-blue cape flutters at his left side. He holds a round, copper-colored shield and a spear in his other hand. Two men with gray beards stand near Joshua with their backs to us. Both gesture up to the sky. One holds a slender staff and the other a curling horn. They and another pair of men, who stoop to hold poles used to carry a chest, all wear long, ivory-white robes, cherry-red drapery, and white turbans. The column of soldiers on foot and horseback pass in front of Joshua to a massive battlefield to our left. The fight takes place in a valley that leads back to a river. A bolt of lightning zigzags from the storm clouds and strikes a city in the deep distance. The artist signed the painting in the lower right, “J. Martin.”

Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon

John Martin

1816

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2004.64.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M58
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