A Mountain Valley with a Waterfall c. 1795

John Glover created this evocative watercolor titled ‘A Mountain Valley with a Waterfall’ at some point in his career. The imagery connects with a wider cultural fascination of the sublime and the picturesque that took hold in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The image creates meaning through several established visual codes. The distant mountains, the rugged valley, and the cascading waterfall are all markers of a romantic sensibility that prized dramatic natural scenery above all else. Glover was working at a time when the institutions of art, such as the Royal Academy, were encouraging artists to look to landscape as a vehicle for expressing national identity and cultural sophistication. While there are no clear indicators here, it seems likely that this landscape represents Wales or the Lake District. Both were popular destinations for artists seeking to capture the wild beauty of the British Isles. Historians consult travel guides, exhibition reviews, and artists’ biographies to better understand the social context in which an artwork like this was made.